Free Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye Page B

Sony’s incarceration off his shoulders, as if all he had to do now was wait until she sorted things out, as if she’d taken upon herself the moral burden, relieving him of it forever.
    Even in her father’s way with the girls she sensed an element of his courting her favor.
    “Masseck showed you the house?” he suddenly asked.
    “Yes, he showed me where my sister must have lived.”
    He gave a knowing, offhand laugh.
    “I know,” he said, “why you came to Grand Yoff, I’ve given it some thought, and now I remember.”
    She was dizzy all of a sudden and felt like jumping up from her chair and rushing into the garden, but she thought of Sony and suppressed every fear and doubt, every discomfort and disappointment.
    It didn’t matter what he might say to her, because she’d get him to cough up the truth.
    “You came in order to get closer to me, yes. You must have been, I’m not sure exactly, twenty-eight or twenty-nine.”
    He spoke in a very neutral tone, as if he wanted to dispel any hint of conflict between them.
    Jakob and the children were listening carefully. Norah felt that her father’s affable manner, together with the air of authority conferred on him by his years and by the vestiges of wealth, ensured that those three gave him the benefit of the doubt where she never could: indeed, they were now inclined to believe him and not her.
    And didn’t they have a point?
    Weren’t all her child-rearing principles being called into question, their rigor, their fierceness, their luster?
    For if Jakob, Grete, and Lucie came to think that she’d lied, dissembled, or somehow weirdly managed to forget, would she not seem all the more culpable for having, in their home life, preached and insisted on such rectitude?
    A warm dampness slid along her thighs and insinuated itself between her buttocks and the chair.
    She felt her dress anxiously.
    In despair she wiped her wet fingers on her napkin.
    “You were keen to know what it was like to live near Sony and me,” her father went on in his kindly voice, “so you rented that house in Grand Yoff. I suppose you wanted to be independent, because of course I’d never have refused to put you up. You didn’t stay long, did you? You’d probably imagined, I don’t know, that things would be as they are in your country now, with people constantly blathering on about ‘opening up,’ ‘asking for forgiveness,’ inventing all sorts of problems and banging on about how much they love each other, but I had work to do in Dara Salam and in any case it’s just not my thing to bare my soul. No, you didn’t stay long, you must have been disappointed. I don’t know. And Sony wasn’t exactly in top form at the time so perhaps he disappointed you too.”
    Norah didn’t budge, so concerned was she not to let on just how wretched she felt.
    She raised her feet and held them above the little puddle under her chair.
    Her face and her neck were burning.
    She said nothing, kept her eyes lowered, and remained seated until everyone had left the table. Then she went to the kitchen to fetch a rag.
    That evening before dark she went outside and stood in the doorway, knowing she’d find her father there, waiting patiently as always for the moment he could make the leap.
    In his grubby shirt he shone as never before.
    He looked at the beige dress she’d put on, pursed his lips, and said, almost kindly, “You peed yourself just now. It doesn’t matter, you know.”
    “Sony told me you strangled your wife,” Norah remarked, ignoring what he’d just said.
    He didn’t jump, nor even shoot a sideways glance at her; he was already somewhat absent, absorbed no doubt by his awareness of night’s approach and his eagerness to regain his dusky perch in the poinciana.
    “Sony acknowledges that he did it,” her father said at last, as if dragged back to a tedious present. “He’s never said, and will never say, anything different. I know him. I’ve every confidence in him.”
    “But