Lullaby - Leila Slimani Page 0,28
cold. Outside, the pavements are covered with black ice. Impossible to go out. Louise tries to entertain the children. She invents games, she sings songs. They build a house out of cardboard. But the day seems to last for ever. Adam has a fever and he won’t stop whining. Louise holds him in her arms; she rocks him for nearly an hour, until he falls asleep. Mila, pacing around the living room, grows fractious too.
‘Come here,’ Louise tells her. Mila approaches and the nanny takes from her handbag the little white vanity case that the child has so often daydreamed about. Mila thinks Louise is the most beautiful woman she knows. She looks like the flight attendant – blonde, with lots of make-up – who gave her sweets on a trip to Nice. Even though Louise is constantly on the move, doing the washing-up and running from the school to the house, she always looks perfect. Her hair is meticulously tied back. Her black mascara, of which she applies at least three thick coats, makes her look like a surprised doll. And then there are her hands, which are soft and smell of flowers. And her nail varnish that never flakes or peels.
Sometimes Louise paints her nails in front of Mila and the little girl, eyes closed, breathes in the smell of the remover and the cheap varnish that the nanny spreads with quick, lively gestures, never getting any on her skin. Fascinated, the child watches Louise wave her hands in the air and blow on the fingers.
When Mila allows Louise to kiss her, it is so she can smell the talcum powder on her cheeks, so she can get a closer look at the glitter that sparkles on her eyelids. She likes to watch her put lipstick on. With one hand, Louise holds a mirror – always perfectly clean – in front of her, while she pulls her face into a strange grimace that Mila tries to reproduce afterwards in the bathroom.
Louise rummages around in her vanity case. She holds the little girl’s hands and coats them with rose-scented cream, which she takes from a tiny pot. ‘Smells nice, doesn’t it?’ Under the child’s astonished eyes, Louise puts varnish on her little nails. A vulgar pink varnish that smells very strongly of acetone. For Mila, this is the smell of femininity.
‘Take off your socks, would you?’ And she paints the toenails of her chubby little feet with nail varnish. Louise empties out the contents of the vanity case on the table. The air fills with orange dust and the smell of talc. Mila laughs suddenly, jubilantly. Louise is putting lipstick on her now, then blue eyeshadow, then a sort of orange paste on her cheeks. She asks her to lower her head and she backcombs her hair – too straight and too fine – until it looks like a mane.
They laugh so hard that they don’t hear Paul as he closes the front door behind him and enters the living room. Mila smiles, mouth open, arms spread wide.
‘Look, Papa. Look what Louise did!’
Paul stares at her. He had been so pleased to get home early, so happy to see his children, but now he feels sick. He has the feeling that he has walked in on something sordid or abnormal. His daughter, his little girl, looks like a transvestite, like a ruined old drag queen. He can’t believe it. He is furious, out of control. He hates Louise for having done this. Mila, his angel, his little blue dragonfly, is as ugly as a circus freak, as ridiculous as a dog dressed up for a walk by its hysterical old-lady owner.
‘What the hell is this? What did you do to her?’ Paul yells. He grabs Mila by the arms and stands her on a stool in the bathroom. He tries to wipe the make-up off her face. The little girl cries out: ‘You’re hurting me.’ She sobs and the rouge just smears, ever thicker, ever stickier, over the child’s diaphanous skin. He has the impression that he is disfiguring her even more, soiling her, and his rage grows.
‘Louise, I’m warning you: I never want to see this again. This kind of thing disgusts me. I have no intention of teaching such vulgar behaviour to my daughter. She’s far too young to dress up like a … You know what I mean.’
Louise stands in the bathroom doorway, holding Adam in her arms. Despite his father’s anger, despite the agitation, the