Lullaby - Leila Slimani Page 0,54
that in addition to paying her rent late, she is failing to take care of the flat. But the room is exactly as it was when he left it to her, the day she visited the studio for the first time.
He stands with one hand on the back of a chair and looks at Louise. He waits, staring at her with his yellow eyes that don’t see much any more but that he is not ready to lower. He waits for her to speak, or to rummage in her handbag for the rent money she owes. He waits for her to make the first move, to apologise for not having replied to his letters or the messages he left on her phone. But Louise doesn’t say a word. She remains standing against the door, like one of those little dogs that bite you when you try to calm them down.
‘You’ve started packing up, by the looks of it. That’s good.’ Alizard points, with his thick finger, at a few boxes in the entrance hall. ‘The next tenant will be here in a month.’
He takes a few steps and tentatively pushes open the door of the shower cubicle. The porcelain bowl has sunk into the ground, and the rotten planks beneath it have given way.
‘What happened here?’
The landlord squats down. He mutters to himself, takes off his jacket and drops it on the floor, then puts on his glasses. Louise stands behind him.
Mr Alizard turns around and says in a louder voice: ‘I asked you what happened!’
Louise jumps. ‘I don’t know. It happened a few days ago. The shower’s old, I think.’
‘No, it’s not! I built this shower cubicle myself. You should think yourself lucky. Before, people used to wash in the bathroom on the landing. It was me, on my own, who put the shower in this studio.’
‘It collapsed.’
‘You didn’t look after it, obviously. Surely you don’t think I’m going to pay for this to be repaired when you’re the one who let it rot?’
Louise stares at him and Mr Alizard cannot guess what that closed, silent look means.
‘Why didn’t you call me? How long have you been living like this?’ Mr Alizard squats down again, his forehead covered in sweat.
Louise does not tell him that this studio is merely a lair, a parenthesis where she comes to hide her exhaustion. That she lives somewhere else. Every day she takes a shower in Myriam and Paul’s apartment. She undresses in their bedroom and delicately places her clothes on the couple’s bed. Then, naked, she crosses the living room to reach the bathroom. Adam sits on the floor and she walks past him. She looks at the babbling child and she knows he will not betray her secret. He will not say anything about Louise’s body, its marble whiteness, her mother-of-pearl breasts, which have seen so little sunlight.
She leaves the bathroom door open so she can hear him. She turns on the water and for a long time – as long as possible – she remains motionless under the burning jet. She doesn’t get dressed again straight away. She sinks her fingers into the pots of cream that Myriam hoards and she massages her calves, her thighs, her arms. She walks barefoot through the apartment, her body wrapped in a white towel. Her own towel, which she hides every day under a pile in a cupboard.
*
‘You noticed the problem and you didn’t try to fix it? You’d rather live like a gypsy?’
Crouching in front of the shower, Alizard hams it up. This studio in the suburbs, he only kept it out of sentimentality. He exhales loudly and puts his hands to his forehead. He touches the black foam with his fingertips and shakes his head, as if only he could possibly understand the gravity of the situation. Out loud, he calculates the cost of the repair work. ‘That’s going to cost about eight hundred euros. At least.’ He dazzles her with the science of DIY, using technical words, claiming that it will take him more than two weeks to repair this disaster. He tries to impress the little blonde woman, who still says nothing.
She can pay for it out of her deposit, he thinks. When she moved in, he insisted that she pay him two months’ rent in advance, as a form of security. It’s sad, but the truth is you can’t trust people. As far as the landlord can remember, he has never had to pay back that sum to