Lullaby Read online

  Myriam spoke to Paul about it and she was disappointed by his reaction. ‘I didn’t know you wanted to work,’ he shrugged. That made her furious, more than it should have done. The conversation quickly descended into mud-slinging. She called him an egotist; he described her behaviour as thoughtless. ‘You’re going to work? Well, that’s fine, but what are we going to do about the children?’ he sneered, ridiculing her ambitions and reinforcing the impression she had that she was a prisoner in this apartment.

  Once they had calmed down, they patiently studied their options. It was late January: there was no point hoping to find a place in a crèche. They didn’t have any connections in the town hall. And if she did start working again, they would be in the worst of all worlds: too rich to receive welfare and too poor to consider the cost of a nanny as anything other than a sacrifice. This, though, was the solution they chose in the end, after Paul said: ‘If you add in the extra hours, you and the nanny will earn more or less the same amount. But if you think it’ll make you happy …’ That conversation left a bitter taste in her mouth. She felt angry with Paul.

  *

  She wanted to do things right. To reassure herself, she went to a nearby agency that had just opened. A small office, simply decorated, run by two women in their early thirties. The shopfront was painted baby blue and adorned with little gold stars and camels. Myriam rang the bell. Through the window, the manager looked her up and down. She got slowly to her feet and poked her head through the half-open door.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Have you come to apply? We need a complete dossier. A curriculum vitae and references signed by your previous employers.’

  ‘No, not at all. I’ve come for my children. I’m looking for a nanny.’

  The woman’s face was suddenly transformed. She seemed happy to welcome a customer and equally embarrassed by the contempt she had shown. But how could she have imagined that this tired-looking woman with her bushy, curly hair was the mother of the pretty little girl whining on the pavement?

  The manager opened a large catalogue and Myriam leaned over it. ‘Please, sit down,’ she said. Dozens of photographs of women, most of them African or Filipino, flashed past Myriam’s eyes. Mila had fun looking at them all. She said: ‘That one’s ugly, isn’t she?’ Her mother scolded her and, with a heavy heart, returned to those blurred, poorly framed portraits of unsmiling women.

  The manager disgusted her. Her hypocrisy, her plump red face, the frayed scarf she wore around her neck. Her racism, so obvious just a minute ago. All this made Myriam want to run away. She shook the woman’s hand. She promised she would speak to her husband about it and she never went back. Instead she pinned a small ad to noticeboards in various local shops. On the advice of a friend, she inundated websites with posts marked URGENT. By the end of the first week, they had received six calls.

  She is awaiting this nanny as if she is the Saviour, while at the same time she is terrified by the idea of leaving her children with someone else. She knows everything about them and would like to keep that knowledge secret. She knows their tastes, their habits. She can tell immediately if one of them is ill or sad. She has kept them close to her all this time, convinced that no one could protect them as well as she can.

  Ever since her children were born, Myriam has been scared of everything. Above all, she is scared that they will die. She never talks about this – not to her friends, not to Paul – but she is sure that everyone has had the same thoughts. She is certain that, like her, they have watched their child sleep and wondered how they would feel if that little body were a corpse, if those eyes were closed for ever. She can’t help it. Her mind fills with horrible scenarios and she shakes her head to get rid of them, recites prayers, touches wood and the Hand of Fatima that she inherited from her mother. She wards off misfortune, illness, accidents, the perverted appetites of predators. At night, she dreams about Adam and Mila suddenly disappearing in the midst of an indifferent crowd. She yells, ‘Where are my children?’ and the people laugh. They think she’s crazy.

  ‘She’s late. Not a good start.’ Paul is growing impatient. He heads over to the front door and looks through the spyhole. It is 2.15 p.m. and the first applicant, a Filipino woman, still hasn’t arrived.

  At 2.20, Gigi knocks softly on the door. Myriam goes to open it. She notices immediately that the woman has very small feet. Despite the cold, she is wearing canvas trainers and white, frilly socks. Though nearly fifty years old, she has the feet of a child. She is quite elegant, her hair tied in a braid that falls halfway down her back. Paul coldly points out her lateness and Gigi lowers her head as she mumbles excuses. She expresses herself very poorly in French. Paul tentatively tries to interview her in English. Gigi talks about her experience. About her children, whom she left in her homeland; about the youngest one, whom she hasn’t seen for ten years. Paul won’t hire her. He asks a few token questions and at 2.30 he walks her to the door. ‘We’ll call you. Thank you.’

  After that there is Grace, a smiling, undocumented immigrant from the Ivory Coast. Caroline, an obese blonde with dirty hair, who spends the interview complaining about her backache and her circulation problems. Malika, a Moroccan woman of a certain age, who stresses her twenty years of experience and her love of children. Myriam had been perfectly clear. She does not want to hire a North African to look after the children. ‘It’d be good,’ people told her. ‘Try to convince Paul. She could speak Arabic to them since you don’t want to.’ But Myriam steadfastly refuses this idea. She fears that a tacit complicity and familiarity would grow between her and the nanny. That the woman would start speaking to her in Arabic. Telling Myriam her life story and, soon, asking her all sorts of favours in the name of their shared language and religion. She has always been wary of what she calls immigrant solidarity.

  *

  Then Louise arrived. When she describes that first interview, Myriam loves to say that it was instantly obvious. Like love at first sight. She goes on about the way her daughter behaved. ‘It was Mila who chose her,’ she likes to make clear. Mila had just woken from her nap, dragged from sleep by her brother’s ear-splitting screams. Paul went to fetch the baby and came back with the little girl following close behind, hiding between his legs. Louise stood up. As Myriam describes this scene, she still sounds fascinated by the nanny’s self-assurance. Louise delicately took Adam from his father’s arms and pretended not to notice Mila. ‘Where is the princess? I thought I saw a princess, but she’s disappeared.’ Mila burst out laughing and Louise continued with her game, searching in the corners, under the table, behind the sofa for the mysteriously vanished princess.

  They ask her a few questions. Louise says that her husband is dead, that her daughter, Stéphanie, is grown-up now – ‘nearly twenty, I can hardly believe it’ – and that she is always available. She gives Paul a piece of paper containing a list of her former employers. She talks about the Rouvier family, who are at the top of the list. ‘I stayed with them for a long time. They had two children too. Two boys.’ Paul and Myriam are charmed by Louise, by her smooth features, her open smile, her lips that do not tremble. She appears imperturbable. She looks like a woman able to understand and forgive everything. Her face is like a peaceful sea, its depths suspected by no one.

  That evening they phoned the couple whose number Louise had given them. A woman answered, a little coldly. As soon as she heard Louise’s name, her tone changed. ‘Louise? You’re so lucky to have found her. She was like a second mother to my boys. It was heartbreaking when we had to let her go. To be perfectly honest, I even thought of having a third child at the time, just so we could keep her.’

  Louise opens the shutters of her apartment. It’s just after five in the morning and, outside, the streetlamps are still lit. A man walks along the street, staying close to the walls to avoid the rain. The downpour lasted all night. The wind whistled in the pipes and invaded her dreams. The rain seems to be falling horizontally now so it can hit t
he building’s facade and the windows with full force. Louise likes looking outside. Just across the road, between two sinister buildings, is a little house, surrounded by a bushy garden. A young Parisian couple moved there at the start of the summer, and on Sundays their children play on the swings and help weed the vegetable garden. Louise wonders what they’re doing in this neighbourhood.

  She shivers from lack of sleep. With the tip of her fingernail she scratches the corner of the window. Even though she cleans it zealously twice a week, the glass always looks murky to her, covered in dust and black smears. Sometimes she wants to clean the panes until they shatter. She scratches, harder and harder, with her index finger, and her nail breaks. She puts her finger in the shower and bites it to stop the bleeding.

  The apartment consists of only one room, which Louise uses as both bedroom and living room. She takes care, every morning, to fold up the sofa bed and put the black slipcover on it. She eats her meals at the coffee table, with the television on. Against the wall are piled some cardboard boxes. They contain perhaps the few objects that might give life to this soulless studio flat. To the right of the sofa is the photograph of a red-headed teenager in a sparkly frame.

  She has carefully spread out her long skirt and blouse over the sofa. She picks up the ballet pumps that she left on the floor, a pair she bought more than ten years ago but which she’s taken such good care of that they still look new. They are patent leather shoes, very simple, with square heels and a discreet little bow on top. She sits down and starts cleaning one, soaking a piece of cotton wool in a pot of make-up remover. Her movements are slow and precise. She cleans with furious care, completely absorbed in her task. The cotton wool is covered in grime. Louise brings the shoe over to the lamp placed on the pedestal table. When she is satisfied with the leather’s shine, she puts the shoe down and picks up the second one.

  It’s so early that she has time to fix the fingernails she broke when she was cleaning. She wraps a plaster around her index finger and paints the other nails with a very discreet pink varnish. For the first time, and despite the price, she had her hair dyed at the salon. She ties it in a bun, off her neck. She puts on her make-up and the blue eyeshadow makes her look older. She is so fragile, so slender, that from a distance you would think her barely out of her teens. In fact, she is over forty.

  *

  She paces around the room, which seems smaller, more cramped than ever. She sits down then stands up again almost immediately. She could turn on the television. Drink some tea. Read an old copy of the women’s magazine that she keeps near her bed. But she is afraid of relaxing, letting the time slip past, surrendering to drowsiness. Waking up so early has left her weak, vulnerable. It wouldn’t take much to make her close her eyes for a minute, and then she might fall asleep and she’d be late. She has to keep her mind alert, has to focus all her attention on this first day of work.

  She can’t wait at home. It’s not even six yet – she’s going to be much too early – but she walks quickly to the Saint-Maur-des-Fossés suburban train station. It takes her more than a quarter of an hour to get there. Inside the carriage, she sits opposite an old Chinese man, who sleeps curled up, with his forehead pressed against the window. She stares at his exhausted face. At each station, she thinks about waking him. She is afraid that he will be lost, go too far, that he will open his eyes, alone, at the terminus, and that he’ll have to double back the way he came. But she doesn’t say anything. It is more sensible not to speak to people. Once, a young girl, dark-haired and very beautiful, had almost slapped her. ‘What are you looking at? Eh? Why the hell are you staring at me?’ she yelled.

  When she arrives at the Auber station, Louise jumps down on to the platform. It’s starting to get busy. A woman bumps into her while she is climbing down the stairs to the metro platform. She chokes on a sickening smell of croissant and burned chocolate. After taking Line 7 towards Opéra, she gets off at the Poissonnière station.

  Louise is almost an hour early so she sits at a table on the terrace of the Paradis, a charmless café with a view of the building’s entrance. She plays with her spoon. She casts envious glances at the man to her right, who sucks his cigarette with his thick-lipped lecher’s mouth. She would like to grab it from his hand and take a long drag. Unable to stand it any longer, she pays her bill and goes into the silent building. She decides to ring the doorbell in a quarter of an hour, and in the meantime she waits on a step between two floors. She hears a noise and barely has time to get to her feet: it’s Paul, hurtling downstairs. He’s carrying his bike and wearing a pink helmet.

  ‘Louise? Have you been here long? Why didn’t you come in?’

  ‘I didn’t want to disturb you.’

  ‘You wouldn’t disturb us. On the contrary! Here, these are your keys,’ he says, taking a bunch from his pocket. ‘Go ahead, make yourself at home.’

  ‘My nanny is a miracle-worker.’ That is what Myriam says when she describes Louise’s sudden entrance into their lives. She must have magical powers to have transformed this stifling, cramped apartment into a calm, light-filled place. Louise has pushed back the walls. She has made the cupboards deeper, the drawers wider. She has let the sun in.

  On the first day, Myriam gives her a few instructions. She shows her how the appliances work. Pointing to an object or a piece of clothing, she repeats: ‘Be careful with that. I’m very attached to it.’ She makes recommendations about Paul’s vinyl collection, which the children must not touch. Louise nods, silent and docile. She observes each room with the self-assurance of a general standing before a territory he is about to conquer.

  In the weeks that follow her arrival, Louise turns this hasty sketch of an apartment into an ideal bourgeois interior. She imposes her old-fashioned manners, her taste for perfection. Myriam and Paul can’t get over it. She sews the buttons back on to jackets that they haven’t worn for months because they’ve been too lazy to look for a needle. She hems skirts and pairs of trousers. She mends Mila’s clothes, which Myriam was about to throw out without a qualm. Louise washes the curtains yellowed by tobacco and dust. Once a week, she changes the sheets. Paul and Myriam are overjoyed. Paul tells her with a smile that she is like Mary Poppins. He isn’t sure she understands the compliment.

  At night, in the comfort of their clean sheets, the couple laugh, incredulous at their new life. They feel as if they have found a rare pearl, as if they’ve been blessed. Of course, Louise’s wages are a burden on the family budget, but Paul no longer complains about that. In a few weeks, Louise’s presence has become indispensable.

  *

  When Myriam gets back from work in the evenings, she finds dinner ready. The children are calm and clean, not a hair out of place. Louise arouses and fulfils the fantasies of an idyllic family life that Myriam guiltily nurses. She teaches Mila to tidy up behind herself and her parents watch dumbstruck as the little girl hangs her coat on the peg.

  Useless objects have disappeared. With Louise, nothing accumulates any more: no dirty dishes, no dirty laundry, no unopened envelopes found later under an old magazine. Nothing rots, nothing expires. Louise never neglects anything. Louise is scrupulous. She writes everything down in a little flower-covered notebook. The times of the dance class, school outings, doctor’s appointments. She copies the names of the medicines the children take, the price of the ice creams she bought for them at the fairground, and the exact words that Mila’s schoolteacher said to her.

  After a few weeks, she no longer hesitates to move objects around. She empties the cupboards completely, hangs little bags of lavender between the coats. She makes bouquets of flowers. She feels a serene contentment when – with Adam asleep and Mila at school – she can sit down and contemplate her task. The silent apartment is completely under her power, like an enemy begging for forgiveness.

  But it’s in the kitchen that she accomplishes the most extraordinary wonders. Myriam has admitted to her that she doesn’t know how to cook anything and doesn’t really want to lear
n. The nanny prepares meals that Paul goes into raptures about and the children devour, without a word and without anyone having to order them to finish their plate. Myriam and Paul start inviting friends again, and they are fed on blanquette de veau, pot-au-feu, ham hock with sage and delicious vegetables, all lovingly cooked by Louise. They congratulate Myriam, shower her with compliments, but she always admits: ‘My nanny did it all.’

  When Mila is at school, Louise attaches Adam to her in a large wrap. She likes to feel the child’s chubby thighs against her belly, his saliva that runs down her neck when he falls asleep. She sings all day for this baby, praising him for his laziness. She massages him, taking pride in his folds of flesh, his round pink cheeks. In the mornings, the child welcomes her with gurgles, his plump arms reaching out for her. In the weeks that follow Louise’s arrival, Adam learns to walk. And this boy who used to cry every night sleeps peacefully until morning.

  Mila is wilder. She is a small, fragile girl with the posture of a ballerina. Louise ties her hair in buns so tight that the girl’s eyes look slanted, pulled towards her temples. Like that, she resembles one of those medieval heroines with a broad forehead, a cold and noble expression. Mila is a difficult, exhausting child. Any time she becomes irritated, she screams. She throws herself to the ground in the middle of the street, stamps her feet, lets herself be dragged along to humiliate Louise. When the nanny crouches down and tries to speak to her, Mila turns away. She counts out loud the butterflies on the wallpaper. She watches herself in the mirror when she cries. This child is obsessed by her own reflection. In the street, her eyes are riveted to shop windows. On several occasions she has bumped into lampposts or tripped over small obstacles on the pavement, distracted by the contemplation of her own image.