Lullaby - Leila Slimani Page 0,35

few days later, on the eve of their departure, Sylvie came to fetch them. Louise had not been prepared for this. The cheerful, eccentric grandmother shouted as she came into the apartment. She threw her bag on the floor and rolled in the bed with the children, promising them a week of parties, games and gluttony. When she turned away, Myriam laughed at her mother-in-law’s tomfoolery. Standing in the kitchen, Louise watched them. The nanny was deathly pale and her eyes, encircled by dark rings, looked sunken. She seemed to be mumbling something. Myriam moved towards her but Louise crouched down to fasten a suitcase. Later Myriam told herself that she must have been imagining things.

Myriam tries to calm herself. She has no reason to feel guilty. She doesn’t owe her nanny anything. And yet, without being able to explain it, she has the feeling that she is tearing the children away from Louise, refusing her something. Punishing her.

Perhaps Louise was upset at being informed so late, not having time to organise her holidays. Or maybe she’s just annoyed that the children are spending time with Sylvie, whom she doesn’t like at all. When Myriam complains about her mother-in-law, the nanny tends to lose her temper. She takes Myriam’s side with excessive zeal, accusing Sylvie of being mad, hysterical, of being a bad influence on the children. She encourages her boss not to let it happen; or, worse, to distance the grandmother from the poor children. In those moments, Myriam feels simultaneously supported and slightly uneasy.

*

As he is about to start the car, Paul takes off the watch from his left wrist.

‘Can you put this in your bag, please?’ he asks Myriam.

He bought this watch two months ago, paying for it with the money received from a contract with a famous singer. It’s a second-hand Rolex that a friend found for him at a very reasonable price. Paul agonised before acquiring it. He really wanted it – he thought it was perfect – but he felt slightly ashamed of this fetishism, this frivolous desire. The first time he wore it, the watch seemed both beautiful and enormous. He found it too heavy, too flashy. He kept pulling down the sleeve of his jacket to conceal it. But very soon he got used to this weight at the end of his left arm. Really, this piece of jewellery – the first he’d ever possessed – was fairly discreet. And anyway, he had a right to treat himself. He hadn’t stolen it from anyone.

‘Why are you taking off your watch?’ Myriam asks him, knowing how fond of it he is. ‘Has it stopped working?’

‘No, it works fine. But you know my mother. She wouldn’t understand. And I don’t feel like spending the whole evening being told off for that.’

*

It is early evening when they arrive. The house is freezing, and half of its rooms are still being renovated. The kitchen ceiling looks like it’s about to collapse and there are bare electrical wires in the bathroom. Myriam hates this place. She is fearful for the children. She follows them all over the house, eyes full of panic, hands ready to stop them from falling. She prowls. She interrupts their games. ‘Mila, come and put another jumper on.’ ‘Adam’s breathing strangely, don’t you think?’

One morning, she wakes up numb. She breathes on Adam’s frozen hands. She worries about Mila’s paleness and forces her to keep her hat on in the house. Sylvie prefers not to say anything. She would like to give the children the wildness and whimsy that they are forbidden. There are no rules with her. She doesn’t shower them with foolish gifts, like parents trying to compensate for their absences. She doesn’t pay attention to the words she uses and she is constantly reprimanded for this by Paul and Myriam.

To annoy her daughter-in-law, she compares the children to ‘little birds fallen out of their nest’. She likes to feel sorry for them having to live in a city, having to put up with rudeness and pollution. She would like to widen the horizons of these children doomed to become sensible, middle-class people, at once servile and authoritarian. Doomed to be cowards.

*

Sylvie bites her tongue. She does her best not to broach the subject of the children’s education. A few months before this, the two women had argued violently. The kind of argument that time does not erase, its words still echoing inside them for a long time afterwards whenever they