Night of October 5–6, 1996
Eugénie woke up with a dry mouth. The previous day, she’d been a bit heavy-handed with the salt. Had salted the couscous twice. She’d been rattled that day because the washing machine had packed up. She’d had to force open the door—water had flooded onto the floor—and wring out the washing, item by item, in a basin. The repairman couldn’t fix it. The machine was a write-off. So, with all this stress, she’d over-salted the couscous stock. In fifteen years, that had never happened to her.
She didn’t usually wake up during the night. But since the twins and grandkids had come for the weekend, she’d heard Jules crying twice. He’d lost his pacifier. She wasn’t that keen on pacifiers for babies. Had never given them to her sons. Christian had sucked his thumb and Alain the end of his cuddly rabbit’s ear. She’d made the rabbit disappear on the day Alain was three. He’d hunted for it everywhere. She’d told him that Doudou must have gone back to the forest to find his mommy. It was just too smelly, despite frequent washing, and it was time Alain slept without it. She’d wrapped it in a plastic bag and then thrown it into the neighbor’s trash can one night before going up to bed. She’d almost gone back down to retrieve it during the night, but Armand had fiddled with her left nipple, so she’d had to fulfill her conjugal duties. She’d fallen asleep, with Armand’s breath on her nape, until she was woken by the garbage truck at 5:00 A.M. Too late, Doudou was gone.
The time had flown by. Dazed with exhaustion for the first few years—barely would one twin drop off before the other one woke for his feed—she had let the shopping, washing, cooking, and cleaning get on top of her. Childhood illnesses had been multiplied by two, with a couple of days between them. When one had chickenpox, the other one would catch it two days later. There were a few summer Sundays when she’d felt truly happy. And the boys had grown like the two fruit trees Armand had planted in the garden on the day they were born.
She’d given them all the attention and care that two children need. All except for tenderness. She’d never learned that stuff, the kisses, the cuddles, the soothing words. She’d never known how to show affection. Never known how to love, to put love into her gestures the way one puts salt into one’s cooking . . . Sometimes, too much.
And yet on evenings after school, when they came home ravenous, she would have liked to smother them with hugs, swallow them up whole, but she never did. She’d been reduced to just wrapping them up warm to compensate for her coldness as a mother. She, the farming girl, the eldest of seven children, “the only boy in the family,” as her father would say. A beast of burden who could do everything: the cooking, the cleaning, looking after her little brothers and sisters, the machinery, the animals. Who could do everything but kiss.
She’d never managed really to love her sons. Her heart had always been cold. But at the birth of her grandchildren, something like love had happened, a kind of magic had taken place. She came close to caressing them.
She couldn’t hear his breathing. She reached over Armand’s pillow was cold. She opened her eyes in the dark. Switched on her bedside lamp. Squinted. The alarm clock showed 1:00 A.M.
She pulled on her socks. Had always hated walking barefoot. She went downstairs to the kitchen for a glass of water. Not tap water: she’d always hated the smell of chlorine. She poured some mineral water into a glass—she’d never drunk from the bottle, either. She was one of those women who wipe their glass with the back of their hand when eating out—which she did once a year, at the Christmas dinner at Armand’s factory.
Before leaving the kitchen, she threw the washing machine a dirty look.
She’d met Armand at a dance. When he’d approached her to invite her to dance, she’d thought he must be mistaken. It couldn’t be her that this man wanted to hold in his arms. She was wearing a dress her father had given her for her twentieth birthday. Her first dress, red with white polka dots. Femininity was a stranger in her life. One that would never cross the threshold. She had tried to put make-up on a few times, but her skin had rejected the colors, turning the powders into tacky streaks. She had always known that she was inferior to Armand. Inferior in every way: he was a very handsome man, she was plain; he was intelligent, she was uneducated; he was no handyman, she could repair anything; he wasn’t friendly, she was easy-going. But she had finally understood that he had chosen her at the dance because she was one of those women who ask no questions. Who spin silently. One of those women who don’t give men a hard time.
On the day of their wedding, she’d been proud to hang on his arm. She’d almost regretted not having any friends to make jealous. But the honeymoon night had been shocking: she wasn’t prepared for it, she knew nothing. She’d seen animals mating, but she’d not seen the pain. Her mother had never told her a thing, except that, to be a good wife, she must do whatever her husband asked her to do. On that night, Armand had torn her insides. And he’d done it again and again, every evening, until her genitals, her thigh muscles, and her insides got used to it and no longer caused her pain.
She’d thought of that saying: beauty can’t be eaten as a side salad.
The birth of the boys had been so painful, she’d promised herself never to go through it again. She’d produced no more children. The truth is, she hadn’t liked being a mother.
Then, through television and women’s magazines, she’d learned that one could orgasm when making love. She told herself that all that was for other women, pretty women. Until she discovered masturbation while flicking through the novel Histoire d’O, lent to her by her neighbor with some other books. Until she grew to like those nights up close to her husband, her big man.
She’d had just one friend, Fatiha Hasbellaoui. She’d met her when she’d worked at the village doctor’s, when the twins were teenagers. Fatiha did the cooking and laundry there. She lived in, with her own room above the one for consultations. It was Fatiha who’d taught her to make seafood couscous. She, too, who had taught her to roar with laughter while savoring the crescent cookies and the stories she brought back from Algeria. As far back as Eugénie could remember, the three best years of her life had been those when she was doing the cleaning at this doctor’s, particularly in the morning, when she’d sit at the kitchen table for a cup of tea, and Fatiha would tell her about the men, the women, the life “over there,” with some belly dancing thrown in. With Fatiha, she’d had women’s conversations such as she’d never had with the other girls at school because she behaved like a tomboy. Fatiha had spoken to her of love, sex, fear, contraception, feelings, freedom—nothing was taboo.
But the doctor, who loved the sun more than anything, had upped sticks to the south of France, taking Fatiha with him. Eugénie would have gladly followed them. The doc had suggested it to her and she’d spoken about it to Armand, who had laughed in her face: And we’d live on your cleaner’s pay, over there? The departure of her boss and her only friend had plunged her into despair, and loneliness, for a long time. She’d found no more work after that. The textile factory had long stopped hiring. No wonder, given all the “Made in Taiwan” labels inside garments.
Fatiha would phone her every New Year. Eugénie would respond cheerily to her Happy New Year, Nini! But until the birth of her grandchildren, every morning, every day, every week, every month, every year had resembled each other like peas in a pod. From one day to the next, only one thing changed: the clothes that she wore.
As she goes back upstairs, she almost slips. She puts too much polish on the wood. Armand says the house is a skating rink.
She hears some noise coming from Alain and Annette’s room. Maybe Annette has got up to tend to Jules. Wretched pacifier.
When she opens her own bedroom door, she gets a start: Alain is sitting on the bed. He doesn’t move. The last time she’d found him in her room, he must have been twelve or thirteen years old. He had mumps and was really suffering with it. He was crying and burning with fever. She hadn’t been able to muster the tender gestures, the comforting he would have needed.
“What are you doing here, son? What’s up?”
Alain doesn’t reply. His eyes are vacant. He stares for ages at the wall opposite, the one on which all the family photos hang.
She switches on the ceiling light. Asks him if he’d like something to drink. He’s white as a sheet. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed as if on the edge of a precipice. She’s never seen her son in that state. Of the two boys, Alain is the more cheerful, the more enthusiastic, the more talkative. Alain is her darling, her sunshine, the one who waltzes her around as soon as he steps through the door. As for Armand, he’s always had a soft spot for Christian, who is more withdrawn, calmer, less outgoing. Alain is the elder of the two. Armand says he must have successfully negotiated the finishing line with his brother.
Eugénie moves closer to him, touches his forehead, then his hands. They’re freezing cold. She covers his shoulders with a shawl. A strange sight. Her big son Alain in a T-shirt with “Nirvana” written under a photo of a blond youth, striped shorts, and a flowery shawl, draped around his shoulders. He seems traumatized. As if he’s just seen a ghost. Then, robotically, he stands up. Before closing the door behind him, he turns back to his mother and mutters:
“So you never saw a thing, Mom?”
She doesn’t understand. Saw what?
She follows him into the corridor. She sees him going into his room and closing the door behind him. She stands there, in front of the closed door. She daren’t knock. Daren’t go in. And anyhow, Jules and Annette are sleeping in there, they mustn’t be woken.
Where is Armand? He must have had insomnia and gone off for a walk. That’s happening to him more and more. He’s changed. He suffers from insomnia and depression.
She gets back into bed, but doesn’t go back to sleep. She sees her son again, sitting on the bed, wild-eyed. And yet he seemed OK last night. He made them laugh. Bounced Jules on his knees. Is he worried about his work? Does he regret giving up his half of the record store to his brother, to go and live in Sweden? Is he anxious about being apart from his brother for the first time?
So you never saw a thing, Mom?
No. She’s not asking herself the right questions. She can’t think straight. You don’t look like that over concerns about work or moving. He’s seen something he shouldn’t have seen.
So you never saw a thing, Mom?
Armand returns to their room at 4:00 A.M. What’s he been doing from one to four in the morning? She closes her eyes, doesn’t move, holds her breath. He lies beside her. His body is burning hot. He hasn’t just come in from outdoors.
“Where were you?”
Armand doesn’t answer. Turns his back on her. She switches on the bedside lamp and looks at him. He’s wearing a shirt, not his pajamas. One of the fine shirts he wears on Sunday. But what’s he doing all dressed in the middle of the night? Armand still doesn’t move. Doesn’t say a word. She’s used to his silences, which have always meant I am superior.
In fact, the only time he looked at her was on the day of the dance. The day he chose her. She’s always been a housewife, not a woman one looks at. Armand has never had to complain of having a hole in his sock. He’s always found his linen ironed and neatly folded in the cupboard. He’s always come home from work to an impeccably kept house, and a full plate. He’s never said thank you to her. Never really spoken, apart from the odd comment on this or that politician, sports reporter, singer, TV presenter. He’s always behaved as if they didn’t exist together. He has always lived on his side. Whereas she has so often wanted to cross over and join him.
She looks at his back, his strong back. She does something she’s never done: she rips the sheet off him. He’s wearing briefs. No pajama trousers. He turns towards her, his eyes full of both rage and shame. He has never hit her. And yet, insidiously, she has always been afraid of him.
His shirt is half-open. She looks at his chest, his muscular chest. They have always made love in the dark. She knows his body through touch and smell. Making love. He’s just made love, he stinks of love. His face, hair, hands, eyes stink of another woman’s genitals. And yet he hasn’t been outdoors. He hasn’t left the house. She looks at him, horrified.
So you never saw a thing, Mom?