Lullaby - Leila Slimani Page 0,30

morals are none of my business. But life is not a party. What would you do with a baby?’

In reality, Mr Franck did care what Louise did with her Saturday evenings. He started asking her questions, increasingly insistent. He wanted to shake her, to slap her face until she confessed. He wanted her to tell him what she did when she wasn’t there, at Geneviève’s bedside, where he could keep an eye on her. He wanted to know from what caresses this child had been conceived, in which bed Louise had abandoned herself to pleasure, to lust, to laughter. He asked her over and over again who the father was, what he looked like, where she’d met him and what his intentions were. But Louise, invariably, responded to his questions by saying: ‘He’s no one.’

Mr Franck took charge of everything. He said he would drive Louise to the doctor himself and wait for her during the procedure. He even promised her that once it was over, he would have her sign a proper contract, that he would pay money into a bank account in her name, and that she would have the right to paid holidays.

The day of the operation, Louise overslept and missed the appointment. Stéphanie took over her life, digging inside her, stretching her, tearing apart her youth. She grew like a mushroom on a damp piece of wood. Louise did not go back to Mr Franck’s house. She never saw the old lady again.

Locked up in the Massés’ apartment, she sometimes feels she is going mad. For the past few days there have been red blotches on her cheeks and her wrists. Louise has to put her hands and her face under cold water to soothe the burning sensation. During the long winter days, a feeling of immense solitude grips her. In a panic, she leaves the apartment, closes the door behind her, faces up to the cold and takes the children to the park.

*

Parks, on winter afternoons. The drizzle scatters dead leaves. The icy gravel sticks to the children’s knees. On benches, on narrow paths, you see those people the world doesn’t want any more. They flee cramped apartments, sad living rooms, armchairs sunk with the imprint of boredom and inertia. They prefer to shiver outside, shoulders hunched and arms crossed. At 4 p.m., idle days seem endless. It is now, in the middle of the afternoon, that you notice the wasted time, that you worry about the coming evening. At this hour, you are ashamed of your uselessness.

Parks, on winter afternoons, are haunted by vagabonds, drifters, tramps, the elderly and unemployed, the sick, the vulnerable. Those who do not work, who produce nothing. Those who do not make money. In spring, of course, the lovers return; clandestine couples find shelter under lime trees, in flowered nooks; tourists photograph statues. But in winter, it’s something else altogether.

Around the icy slide there are nannies and their army of children. Wrapped up in cumbersome padded jackets, the toddlers run like fat Japanese dolls, noses trickling snot, fingers violet. They breathe out white steam and stare at it, fascinated. In prams, babies held tight under straps contemplate their elder siblings. Perhaps some of them feel melancholic, impatient. They probably can’t wait to be able to get warm by crawling up the wooden climbing frame. They are eager to escape the surveillance of these women who catch them with a sure or rough hand, their voices calm or furious. Women wearing boubous on this freezing winter day.

There are mothers too, mothers staring into space. Like the one who gave birth recently and now finds herself confined to the world’s edge; who, sitting on this bench, feels the weight of her still flabby belly. She carries her body of pain and secretions, her body that smells of sour milk and blood. This flesh that she drags around with her, which she gives no care or rest. There are smiling, radiant mothers, those extremely rare mothers, gazed at lovingly by all the children. The ones who did not say goodbye this morning, who didn’t leave them in the arms of another. The ones set free by a day off work, who have come here to enjoy it, bringing a strange enthusiasm to this ordinary winter’s day at the park.

There are some men too, but closer to the benches, closer to the sandpit, closer to the little ones, the women form a solid wall, an impassable barrier. They are suspicious of men who