Marie NDiaye - Ladivine

What he wanted from them, he eventually confessed to himself, was an illumination.

About what? Oh, he didn’t know, he didn’t really want to know till the Cagnacs revealed all, both the subject of the illumination and the illumination itself.

But his friends’ indifference to his obsession now gave rise to that touch of rancour when he thought of them.

He envied them, he wished he could live in the clearing at the end of the rugged road, in that beautiful, brand-new house, on the edge of the forest no-one ever ventured into. He left the dealership an hour earlier than usual, claiming an important meeting.

The truth was that he wanted to call Ladivine without Clarisse around, not that she would have eavesdropped, not that she would have asked any questions about Ladivine’s life, the two children, the German husband.

Such concern had her sons caused her, and still did cause her, so many reasons for sadness or melancholy had they given her that she seemed to have prudently opted to express no opinion and endanger no affection by any involvement in Richard Rivière’s previous life.

She had thus learned of Clarisse Rivière’s murder with the same fleeting horror, the same sombre, superficial sympathy she felt for any victim of the horrible things she read about in the papers.

She’d never met Ladivine, never spoke of wanting to, and not, he was sure, out of jealousy, because there was no-one less possessive than Clarisse.

She simply preferred, insofar as possible, to take no interest in the matter, to invest no sentimental capital in that relationship.

That was fine with Richard Rivière. Nevertheless, he did not like knowing she was in the next room when he talked with Ladivine.

She might call out to Trevor or laugh aloud at something funny on television, as she had last time, and Richard Rivière would be so unhappy that he’d want to slam down the phone.

Because it wasn’t Clarisse Rivière laughing or calling out as he talked with their beloved daughter from their house in Langon, where they would have been happy, had he only found the way to let the real Clarisse Rivière appear, had he not, perhaps, frightened her off.

It was only Clarisse, a perfectly nice woman who didn’t deserve to make him feel so disappointed.

Whom or what had he frightened away?

Before what mystery had he shown a lack of courage or depth?

He turned into his building’s car park and found it impossible to park. The next car’s tyres intruded so far into his slot that he would be trapped in his four-wheel drive, even if he did somehow insert it into such a cramped space.

He looked up at the windows, at once fearing and hoping he might see the bony face of the aged, baby-haired woman, no doubt watching for his return and now savouring her vengeance. Did he dare go up to her apartment, firmly ask her to please leave room for his car when she parked her own? A vague disgust held him back, a feeling that he couldn’t take on such a trivial problem just before calling Ladivine. He drove out of the car park and down the street until he found a free space.

The mountain seemed to have eased its grip just a little, no longer pressing down on his back with all its terrible might, though his spine was still aching, and when he started towards the building he realised he was walking like an old man, shoulders hunched, head bowed.

Trevor wasn’t there. He checked to be sure, opening the door to each room, even the little laundry at the far end of the kitchen, his weariness and heartache calmed by intense relief at being alone.

This was his home, picked out on his own and furnished to his own tastes, Clarisse and Trevor having moved in two years after he bought it, such that he always felt more as if he was putting them up than sharing the apartment with them.

But since moving back Trevor so rarely went out that Richard Rivière could almost never come home without finding him there, and that got on his nerves.

He took off his business suit, put on a T-shirt and joggers, poured a glass of white wine.

He was so grateful to Trevor for not being there, as if the boy had done him an exceptionally kind favour, that he made a solemn vow to drive him to the doctor’s, listen closely to what the doctor said, make it abundantly clear to Trevor, even ostentatiously clear if need be, that he cared.

He would help him lose weight, help him become once more the handsome, energetic boy he used to be — such would be his promise, as soon as Trevor came home.

As usual, his pleasure at being alone was slightly diminished by this vague, restless impatience to see Trevor again and make everything different, and the suspicion that everything would be just the same, the reality of Trevor’s cold, mocking face yet again shattering the illusion that he could force the boy to let himself be loved.

Suddenly upset, he downed his wine in one go. Then he dialled his daughter Ladivine’s number.

How long since he last called her? A year, a year and a half, more?

It was almost always on her initiative that they talked on the phone or met in a Paris café. “I’m coming down to see Mum,” she would write to him now and then, in an e-mail telling of nothing more than the dismal or wonderfully mild weather they were having this year in Berlin.

I’ll be in Paris myself, he would answer.

And Ladivine was convinced that he often had business in the capital, and he did nothing to suggest otherwise, though in truth he never set foot there save to see his daughter.

This was the only way they ever met. Leaving these reunions, he felt pathetic, unworthy.

He would gaze hungrily at the astonishing, adult, foreign face that was now Ladivine’s, sometimes touched by the shadow of an expression that fleetingly summoned up the very distant, aching memory of a little girl now gone forever, and neither this young woman he vaguely resembled nor he himself as this surprising, autonomous person’s father seemed in any way tangible.

They were the protagonists of a dream he was having in his Annecy bedroom, beneath the gaze of the hostile mountain, and when he woke his cheeks would be damp with tears because he would know none of this had existed, there’d never been a darkeyed girl, he’d never had a child whose hand squeezed his own as they walked on the hill, behind a house by the vines.

He gazed hungrily at Ladivine’s face, and it hurt him terribly: in a moment he’d wake up, the mountain would be snickering, he’d be lost and alone.

“Berger,” said a little girl’s serious voice.

“I’m sorry?” he said, caught off guard.

“ Sie sind bei der Familie Berger ,” she repeated, after a few seconds of silence.

He stammered:

“I’m sorry, I don’t speak German. You must be, um. .”

Unable to recall Ladivine’s daughter’s name, he let out an embarrassed little laugh. He didn’t dare say who he was.

“ Ich verstehe kein französisch ,” she said curtly.

He heard the sound of a receiver being carelessly set down, then a brief conversation.

“Hello? This is Berger.”

The accent, like the voice, was gentle and slightly sad.

“Hello, this is Richard Rivière, Ladivine’s father.”

“Oh.”

The man seemed to come to life.

“Hello, hello, I’m very happy to. . to hear you at last. It’s not true, you know, what Annika said, she understands French, she speaks it very well.”

“It’s perfectly alright,” Richard Rivière mumbled, since Berger seemed to be apologising for his daughter.

“It’s just that she doesn’t want to now.”

Then he fell silent. Richard Rivière said nothing, unsure what to say, waiting for Berger to offer to put Ladivine on.

But a deep silence had settled in, peaceful, cosy, like the silence of a perfectly matched elderly couple, already well past the point where two people can pretend they find nothing odd in each other’s muteness.