Marie NDiaye - Ladivine

A presage would have been nice, of course, even a simple hint that something was coming, and all day long, and at night in his dreams, he stood ready to open the way to any visit his daughter might pay him.

When he thought of her, he no longer pictured the young woman’s face, now almost forgotten, but the guileless, quietly introspective face of the little girl. With numbing clarity, he remembered her hand in his as they went walking on the hill, even the feel of her skin, the mosquito bite on her thumb, his rough fingers absent-mindedly stroking it, which she liked.

Somewhere his beloved daughter, the child he once cherished, as he now remembered, was taking steps to flush out Clarisse Rivière

— how grateful he was, and how aware that he had to welcome any form her reappearance might take!

He confessed to himself that he would rather Ladivine come back after the trial, the following month. The mere thought of it filled him with dread.

He couldn’t help remembering that he had found a sort of escape from his grief, from the feeling of horror and then unreality that had filled him on learning of Clarisse Rivière’s murder, in the many interviews he gave at the time, bewildered, faintly desperate, little understanding why anyone should ask his opinion of the murderer’s personality, of that Freddy Moliger he knew nothing of, but offering it gladly, taking a strange pleasure in it, delighting in his role, his importance. He’d read some of those interviews, and they made him ashamed.

Who on earth was that Richard Rivière, he’d wondered, competent, informed, speaking unguardedly of the depth of his pain?

Now he got up every morning with the trial on his mind, and he was horrified to think of his daughter Ladivine being there in person, and so he silently begged her to stay away, wherever she was hearing him from.

He’d hired a lawyer to represent them both, a certain Noroit, from Bordeaux, someone he felt comfortable with, finding nothing to intimidate him in that middle-aged man’s dull, awkward appearance and plain polyester suits.

But if Ladivine were there with him, and if once again her presence gave him the painful impression that he could only have known her in his dreams, that her face meant nothing to him in real life, and that, no matter what he might think, he was therefore now dreaming, if that happened, as it always did, and he concluded that he would soon be waking up in his Annecy room, disoriented, desperately sad, how would he ever hold up till the end of the trial?

Wouldn’t it be hard enough just to see Moliger, with that loser look he remembered from the photos, imagining that to this man, perhaps, Clarisse Rivière had shown her real face?

Because otherwise, he wondered, why would Clarisse Rivière have taken up with that creep?

It couldn’t have been sex, he thought. He had the face of a drunkard, there was something repellent about him, something ignoble that he thought a sure cure for any sort of love.

She’d gone looking, he told himself, racked by a jealousy he’d never felt in his life, she’d gone looking for someone, anyone (preferably, perhaps, blind to what she was offering?) to reveal herself to.

Was that it? He wasn’t sure of anything any longer.

All he knew was that he didn’t want to see his daughter Ladivine in such circumstances.

He wanted to see her transformed, he thought, and enlightened about Clarisse Rivière, he wanted his heart to recognise her at once, without doubt or regret, never wondering if that woman was once the little girl whose hand he held, he wanted to see her and hear her say: I’ve brought Mama back to you.

He would not be afraid, he thought, of either one’s new face.

:

ladivine sylla dressed and groomed herself with even more care than usual.

She oiled her hair, then pulled it back and bound it at her nape with an elastic band, tugging so vigorously that her scalp smarted, but she was long used to that, and scarcely noticed the pain.

Next she put on a tweed trouser suit she’d found for forty euros in a second-hand shop. She had chosen a dark red turtleneck to go with it, and her best pair of shoes, high-heeled ankle boots on which the trouser cuff broke ever so slightly, which she considered the height of elegance.

She went and said goodbye to her figurines, asking them to wish her luck. She clearly heard them answer, each in its own way, in its own distinctive voice.

“Luck with what?” asked the little gilded Buddha.

But she couldn’t say, not quite knowing herself.

Luck one day entering her life suddenly seemed to her so absurd

an idea that she nearly laughed out loud at herself. Did she even really want such a thing? Not likely. A stroke of luck now would be grounds for alarm, she thought, and it would feel like a punishment. What could be crueller than good things coming too late, when the worst possible thing had happened?

She went off to catch the tram on the quay, a thick, silty-smelling fog in the air. She did not quite know what she wanted for herself, but she knew exactly what she didn’t, at any price: her words having some sort of influence.

The lawyer, that Bertin, had told her she had only to answer whatever she was asked with the utmost sincerity. She was not to try to work out what they wanted from her, nor even imagine they wanted anything in particular. In a sense, that was none of her business.

Ladivine Sylla did not believe a word of it, though she feigned absolute confidence in Bertin.

She was convinced there were things that he wanted her to say, and he’d called her as a witness in the hope or the certainty she would say them. That was his job. From what that Freddy Moliger had told him of Ladivine Sylla, Bertin thought her worth putting on the stand, and that was fine with her, Ladivine Sylla, but she wanted her words to carry no weight in anyone’s mind, on one side or the other.

That was her only concern.

The rest, she told herself, she could handle. She’d long since stopped crying. Why should she break down there in front of all those people?

For two years she’d been buying figurines of young princes or damsels in tears, their necks bowed, their heads bent over their joined hands, and whenever she woke in the morning crushed by sadness she lined them up on the front row of her shelf, then sat down before them and stared at them for hours.

Finally she fell into the state she was seeking, between awareness and stupor, and the figurines seemed to be weeping for her, sharing in her pain, gazing on her with their suddenly living, damp, shining eyes.

In their porcelain pupils she saw her own dry, dead eyes reflected, and she felt better, and consoling words came to her lips, which she murmured to her poor figurines, nearly reaching out to dry off their tear-streaked cheeks.

But no-one had ever come to console her, no-one had ever dried her tears with a tender hand, in those early days when she wept and wept for Malinka. That’s how life was for her.

The one person she thought of when her need for solace grew so overpowering that her figurines’ good wishes were no longer enough was that Freddy Moliger. Had she dared, she would surely have paid a call on that Moliger in his prison, and she had no doubt that her sorrow would have been lightened.

She got off the tram near the courthouse, walked with some difficulty in her high heels to the foot of the stone steps.

She felt tall, slender and very old, she thought her face must be like the face of her dear little Saxony porcelain shepherdess, smooth and old, thin, slightly vacant. Her scalp stung, which was good, because it made her feel alive, sharp, not dulled and lost, as she usually did since Malinka’s death.

A dog was watching her from the other side of the street.