The Suitors - By Cecile David-Weill Page 0,10
I already know that her excitement has crested and must subside. And in fact, sated with violence, she quickly emerges from her trance to tell me coldly, “Go wash your face, it’s an ugly mess.” Then she turns on her heel to rejoin my parents, my sister, and the eventual guests before whom she immediately plays the model employee who has just had to deal with the teary tantrum of a poor neurotic child. And when I reappear, she pats me on the head, pretending to forgive me: “Oh! She’s still all upset …”
An apparently well-meaning exclamation I correctly interpret as an extra insult intended to let me know that my face is swollen from crying, so I now look a fright.
“There’s no reason to make such a fuss, after all!” she concludes, letting me know that the incident is closed, that I’d better not tell my mother about it, because Nanny is the boss, able to disguise her cruelty as affection and turn my tears of suffering into the whimpering of a little girl prone to overdramatize. I could have killed her.
After such episodes, Nanny avoids my eyes for a few hours, no doubt unnerved by the hatred she can read there, as well as my understanding of her pitiful attempt to dominate her charges by buying the good graces of Marie—who looks up to her—while trying to destroy me, even though I could unmask her.
She hasn’t even enough goodness in her character to realize that I would never do that, wouldn’t ever deprive Marie of the illusion of having a kind governess who dotes on the delightful little girl in her care. For that would spoil the tiny bit of joy my sister finds in her relationship with the woman we’ve nicknamed Louis XI because she shares that sour, stern profile found in our history books. I can tell that Marie quite often pretends to be happier than she feels. Why let her know about the vile injustice I endure? Complaining about it would make me seem jealous, as if I envied Marie instead of taking comfort in her naïveté for accepting at face value the simulated love of a substitute mother. For I have already understood that despite appearances, our governess doesn’t love Marie any more than she does me.
In reality, my sister isn’t better off than I am. When she worries about receiving bad grades in school, for example, Nanny tells her it isn’t serious instead of encouraging or helping her. Scholastic achievement, she says, is useless because the world is full of intellectuals with fine diplomas who amount to nothing in life. A speech offering the triple advantage of telling my sister that since she’s not an intellectual, she’s probably an idiot; informing me that my successes in school and supposed intelligence will get me nowhere; and playing the two of us off against each other, as usual.
Deep down, our governess is a fool. Wishing to dominate us, but incapable of fulfilling her ambition, she must both clip our wings and divide us, for fear that we might denounce her if we finally find strength in our true beauty and intelligence, and pool our forces to put together the puzzle pieces that will reveal her weakness.
Nanny always wore a white smock and was dreadfully ugly, with skin tanned by the sun in Egypt, where she had spent much of her life. She had a slender hooked nose, lips as thin as a scar, red-rimmed, washed-out blue eyes, and breasts that rested heavily on her stomach. Marie’s beauty so bewitched Nanny that she really seemed never to tire of it. She would take Marie in her arms, touching her as if somehow to strengthen her claim on the child, and she photographed her everywhere, all the time.
Did my mother, who lived in constant fear of our governess giving notice, find this attachment convenient? Or did she allow herself to be swayed by our nanny’s preferences? In any case, following her lead, our mother crowned my sister the star of the family. Our closets contain entire albums devoted to Marie at all ages: an infant as perfect as an Ivory Snow baby, a giggly little Goldilocks, a mischievous young lady miraculously untouched by the indignities of puberty. And hundreds of snapshots of the ravishing and lissome blonde she became are tacked to the walls of my mother’s private rooms, framed on the chintz-skirted tables of her boudoir, or displayed on silver easels on the mantelpiece.
My mother could