Lullaby - Leila Slimani Page 0,17
her hands, smiles.
*
The next morning, Paul wakes up in a crumpled shirt, his lips still stained by red wine. In the shower, fragments of the evening flash up in his memory. He remembers his proposal and the dark look his wife shot him. He feels stupid and tired in advance. He’ll have to fix his mistake now. Or pretend he never mentioned it, let time pass, wait for it to be forgotten. He knows that Myriam will make fun of him, of his drunken promises. She will blame him for his financial recklessness and the thoughtless way he treats Louise. ‘Because of you, she’ll be disappointed, but she’s so kind, she won’t even dare to say anything.’ Myriam will hold their bills in front of his eyes, bring him back to reality. ‘It’s always like that when you drink,’ she will conclude.
But Myriam does not seem angry. Lying on the sofa, with Adam in her arms, she smiles at him so sweetly that he can’t believe it. She’s wearing men’s pyjamas, too big for her. Paul sits next to her and nuzzles her neck. He loves its heather-like smell. ‘Is it true what you said last night?’ she asks. ‘You think we can take Louise with us this summer? That’ll be so great! For once, we’ll have a real holiday. And Louise will be so happy. I mean, what else could she do that’d be better than that?’
It’s so hot that Louise has left the window of the hotel room half-open. The shouts of drunkards and the screeching of car brakes do not wake Adam and Mila, who snore, mouths open, one leg dangling out of bed. They are spending only one night in Athens and Louise is sharing a tiny room with the children, to save money. They spent the whole evening laughing. They went to bed late. Adam was happy: he danced in the streets, on the cobblestones of Athens, and old people clapped their hands, captivated by his ballet. Louise did not like the city, which they walked through all afternoon despite the sweltering sun and the whining of the children. She is only thinking about tomorrow, about their trip to the islands, whose myths and legends Myriam has recounted to the children.
Myriam isn’t good at telling stories. She has a slightly irritating way of articulating the complicated words and finishes all her sentences with ‘You see?’, ‘You understand?’ But Louise listened, like a studious child, to the story of Zeus and the goddess of war. Like Mila, her favourite was Aegeus, who gave his blue to the sea, the sea on which she will ride in a boat for the first time.
In the morning, she has to drag Mila out of bed. The little girl is still asleep when the nanny undresses her. In the taxi on the way to the port of Piraeus, Louise tries to remember some ancient gods, but they are all gone from her memory. She should have written the names of those heroes down in her flowered notebook. She would have thought about them again afterwards, alone. At the entrance to the port, a huge bottleneck has formed and some policemen are trying to direct traffic. It’s already very hot and Adam, sitting on Louise’s knees, is soaked with sweat. Massive luminous signs point the way to the docks where the boats for the islands are moored, but Paul doesn’t understand them. He gets angry, becomes agitated. The taxi driver makes a U-turn, shrugging with resignation. He doesn’t speak English. Paul pays him. They get out of the car and run to their quay, dragging their suitcases and Adam’s pushchair behind them. The crew are about to raise the bridge when they see the family, frenzied and dishevelled, waving their arms about. They were lucky.
No sooner are they on the boat than the children fall asleep. Adam in his mother’s arms and Mila with her head resting on Paul’s knees. Louise wants to see the sea and the contours of the islands. She goes up on to the bridge. On a bench, a woman is lying on her back. She is wearing a bikini: a thong and a strip of material around her chest that barely hides her breasts. She has very dry platinum-blonde hair, but what strikes Louise is her skin. It is purplish and covered with large brown stains. In places – inside her thighs, on her cheeks, just above her breasts – her skin is blistered and raw,