I tried to force her. I put my arm around her broad shoulders to help with an exercise she refused to let her mind even touch. In my turn, I stared into her yellow eyes, smiling deliberately, insistently, and I snapped my fingers before her closed face as if to invite her to dance, and I murmured:
“Séverine, I’m going to lend you some books, and you’ll read them, and then you’ll tell me about them.”
But not one of the many books lent to Séverine was ever returned, was ever the subject of any discussion, ever revealed that Séverine’s character had been affected by it, or her hatred for me reduced.
* * *
“Tell Séverine I’m sorry for being so curious,” I whisper to Séverine’s husband through the glass at the post-office counter.
Studying him at such close range, I’m disturbed and surprised to see Séverine’s husband for what he is, and unhappy with that girl for concealing what matters most about him.
He asks me what business I’d like to transact. “None,” I say, a little flustered.
And then, to that attentive young man: “Don’t you recognize me?”
I feel very alone. The glance I then give Séverine’s husband must be pleading or anxious, for in a low, kindly voice he replies that Séverine has already decided to keep working for me. I go on my way, listless, smelling the scornful workings of a conspiracy, a condescension, in the air of the street. And what my nose senses is confirmed by what I see on the opposite sidewalk, all aglow with a heart-wrenching gaiety: my wife and children, all three having long since made up their minds not to speak to me again, walking with long, lively strides toward the house that they live in without me.
Scurrying to keep up, I call out, first to my two sons and then to my wife.
“How are you doing?” I shout, forcing myself to sound cheerful, lighthearted.
They briefly turn their irritated gaze on me, three pairs of dark eyes, all identical and similarly hostile, then hurry off toward the avenue that I theoretically don’t even have the right to walk down.
* * *
Later, once Werner has come back to town, I’ll confide in him on the subject of my wife and children, and though Werner is far younger than I am he will lighten my burden, saying, for example, in his cultivated voice, “Are you supposed to spend your whole life making amends? Your whole life being punished?” And his fervid serenity, and the unshakable certitude of his pragmatism, will bit by bit lead me to find it unfair, contrary to what I once thought, that I should think myself condemned to spend my entire life expiating the mistakes or the crimes I committed (yes, it’s true — unless that’s not exactly what they were?) against my own family. Ensconced in my best armchair, his handsome, disquieting face making me forget the disquiet that my house’s desolate, whispering depths inspire in me every night (for my house doesn’t like me), Werner will force me to regain some of the self-respect, poise, and excellence I’d been fleetingly shown by the broad mirror that hung in the air when I stopped by the post office.
My wife and children made an ally of my house, where they once lived, where they no longer live. My house misses my children’s games and my wife’s wrenching cries, my house jealously envies that other house they now live in, unknown and modern. And on that point, far from laughing at my terrors and precautions, Werner will murmur, with a kindheartedness that brings tears to my eyes: “Don’t forget, you’re the master of your house.” It sounds so innocent when Werner says it. I must neither fear my house nor beg it to forgive me for being alone.
I am the master of my house.
* * *
Séverine comes by while I’m still away at school. Surprised to see the lights on in my house, I stand for a moment in the rain, my face raised toward the living room window, and I see Séverine pacing slowly back and forth, moving her lips, sometimes smiling into the little phone she keeps clasped to her ear.
With some sheepishness I remember a tiny gold phone I once confiscated from Séverine, thinking I’d heard it ring during class. I want to bring that incident up with Séverine. But Séverine’s never shown any sign of remembering me as her ex-teacher. Never has Séverine seemed to recall that connection between us, fifteen years back, and whenever, irritated, I’ve found myself on the verge of spitting out: “What did you do with those books I lent you, Séverine?” I’ve always kept quiet, lips pressed together, for fear I might see Séverine narrow her wary eyes in incomprehension, and so realize she’s fulfilled her pledge to allow no germ of my being into her person, since she has deeply and utterly forgotten me.
I rush into the house, excited and relieved. I say to Séverine:
“I’m so happy to see you again, Séverine.”
And then my joy gets the better of me, and I add: “That telephone of yours, Séverine, is it the one I took away from you, then gave back at the very end of the year?”
Séverine doesn’t answer. She carefully rehooks the telephone to her belt, she gathers up her long chestnut hair and fixes it behind her neck. Séverine pirouettes on her sleek athletic shoes, colored a victorious silver. She walks away, muttering that she’s going up to do my room.
I find this extremely unpleasant. I feel ashamed and resentful. Toward Séverine’s back, toward her broad, unfriendly, puritanical back, I snap:
“Why didn’t you tell me your husband’s an Arab? Why didn’t you tell me I know him, Séverine? Why did you want to keep those two things from me, Séverine?”
Séverine freezes in the entryway, at the foot of the big black staircase that leads up to my room, as well as my children’s old rooms, still untouched, still crammed with their baby clothes and their toys, though my children are now in their teens, as if they’d fled with such haste that there was no time to take anything with them. Séverine looks back. In a self-possessed voice, she tells me I’m clearly mistaken, because there’s no way I could have met her husband before.
“No, you’re the one who’s mistaken, Séverine.”
I speak calmly. I have no wish to gloat, even if I’m right. My feelings are hurt. Like my house, Séverine doesn’t like me. Nevertheless, I speak calmly.
“Your husband was my student, Séverine. He was in your class, and he was the only Arab in that class, so I remember him well. Which means that you met him in high school, Séverine.”
Séverine snickers. Her discomfort and melancholy undulate heavily between us.
She starts up the black staircase, empty-handed, as if, rather than clean, she was planning to lie down for a nap in my room. Then, reaching the top, she leans over the banister, and I think I she’s falling, throwing herself over. But she merely repeats that there’s no way I could have met her husband before, and I’m obviously confusing him with someone else. And I think I see her detach something from her neck and drop it my way, and I think I can feel a youthful human skin falling over my feet, a skin heavy with rancor and bitterness.
* * *
I don’t remember Séverine’s husband’s name, because it’s a complicated name, which I found difficult to hold in my memory even then. But I do recall Werner’s name, including his real first name. And when, later, I enter Werner’s luxurious house, when I timidly take my place in one of his armchairs, upholstered in a pale green leather so fine-grained it will make me think of Séverine’s neck and arms, I’ll squint slightly to fend off the dazzling light from the bare picture windows and observe that the sun always shines with extraordinary brightness in Werner’s garden, and that this excess seems to have established itself as a banal, inevitable amenity of the house, like the many bathrooms and the three communicating salons, and then, gently basking in the warmth pouring through the panes, eyes half-closed, as happy as if it were one of my sons hosting me, I will ask Werner: