She did all she could to make leaving easy for Richard Rivière, with the same discreet, tireless solicitude she drew on to help people out at the restaurant, far beyond what her duties required and on her own time, people who never even thought of expressing their gratitude, since she’d convinced them that for her nothing was ever a burden.
But, Ladivine sensed, Richard Rivière was not taken in by those simple ways.
Beneath her unquestioning helpfulness, he could see the wrenching sacrifice Clarisse Rivière was making for the sake of his freedom, the need for freedom he’d evoked to justify his leaving her, and whatever disregard or disdain it might earn her she did all this as if she didn’t even see the sacrifice, as if she expected no reward, whether thanks or vague shame on the part of the person obliged to her, absolutely not.
She would have been shocked and mortified had anyone suspected she hoped for such things.
Confronted with that accusation, thought her daughter Ladivine, she would have stammered, wide-eyed, one open hand rubbing the air as if to erase what had just been said:
“No need for. . Oh, no, no, it’s. . I’m just helping out.”
“Really,” she would have added, forcing out a little chuckle to show that she wasn’t a complicated person, that there was nothing behind anything she did or said, no meaning other than what was obvious and outright.
Was that true? wondered Ladivine.
It was, no question, she told herself after every visit from Clarisse Rivière, whose big, bulging, murky-water-coloured eyes seemed to grow even cloudier when she heard talk of ambiguous acts, perverse behaviour, cunning lies.
A vague, lost smile would come over her, like the smile that parted her hesitant lips when someone spoke to her in a foreign tongue, her damp eyes seeming about to well over with the anxious tears always set off in her by a failure to understand, whether the German language or other people’s behaviour, but the tears never flowed, and her smile took root and bloomed on Clarisse Rivière’s delicate, mobile, scarcely wrinkled face like an ephemeral flower of innocence.
She accepted her ignorance and pulled away, seeming to hear nothing more, making an offering of her smile, of her devoted, generous presence, just as she did when the day came for Richard Rivière to leave their house in Langon, and leave her as well, Clarisse Rivière, his wife of more than twenty-five years, helping him seal the boxes of tools, clothes and dishes he would be taking to his new home, even carrying some of those boxes downstairs, though they weighed nearly as much as she did, taking care not to bump anything, not to hurt anything, because whatever Clarisse Rivière undertook she undertook with care and conscientiousness.
Did it make Richard Rivière angry, Ladivine wondered, to see his frail, abandoned wife working so hard to make his leaving easy?
Far more likely, she supposed, he simply shot her a look of helpless exasperation and turned away, thinking he would never again have to endure Clarisse Rivière’s excessive kindliness, and that naive, impalpable, shocking devotion he’d come to find so unbearable, and Clarisse Rivière’s preposterous ways, the comically baffled or beleaguered look that sometimes appeared in her huge eyes, the hurried trot of a walk, neck thrust out like a turtle’s, making quick work of her rare attempts at elegance and concealing the strange beauty of her long, sinuous, agile body, unknown even to her.
Richard Rivière must often have found his wife ridiculous, thought Ladivine, must have been ashamed of her in public and even more deeply ashamed for seeing her that way, but very likely Clarisse Rivière never suspected it, she who knew nothing of ridicule, who never mocked anyone, not because she was virtuous but because she was innocent, and whom some, Ladivine knew, just as Richard Rivière must have known, thought a fool because she lacked the capacity to see malice.
“I’ll call Richard,” Ladivine said, then, her heart quailing, her hands suddenly damp, and she was so relieved to hear the phone ring and ring fruitlessly in the house (or flat?) outside Annecy, where her father lived, where she’d never been, that her legs trembled and her forehead went cold, like someone miraculously saved from some deadly menace.
The second day Richard Rivière answered, and his severe, preoccupied voice turned gentle, surprised, and loving when he realised it was Ladivine. “Is that you, my girl? How are you, darling?”
And Ladivine was struck dumb, though she had no reason to suspect any disaffection on her father’s part, since it was she and she alone, she thought, who had decided they couldn’t see each other until the trial, and Richard Rivière had complained at the time, writing her long e-mails to tell her he missed her, that her resolution was unjust.
And it was, and Ladivine knew it.
But the mere thought of seeing Richard Rivière before Clarisse
Rivière had been restored to her place of quiet, pure respectability (by the grace of a severe prison sentence? and suppose that’s not how it turned out?) set off a long shiver of almost loathing resentment towards Richard Rivière, and left her heaving and breathless, like an animal driven too hard.
It was cruel, it was unjust, and she knew it.
Because what had happened was in no way his fault, because there was nothing to blame but the very thing Richard Rivière had tried to escape, Clarisse Rivière’s inability to grasp the concept of malevolence.
But Ladivine could not help thinking that horror and vileness would never have entered their lives had Richard Rivière not left Clarisse, had he sacrificed his hunger for a new life to the need to protect Clarisse Rivière.
By leaving her, he’d handed her over to savagery, which she didn’t know how to see.
She was defenceless, he’d left her that way, alone and naked and no doubt already drunk with the need to give of herself as soon as Richard Rivière’s car turned the corner.
“Hello? Are you there? Ladivine, sweetie?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
She was gasping for breath, clutching the receiver, trying to hold back the wave of anger threatening to submerge her, as always when she pictured Clarisse Rivière abandoned on the house’s front step while Richard Rivière’s four-wheel drive (was it already the Mercedes M-Class then?) sped away, filled with suitcases and boxes, gleaming dimly in the pale sunlight of that wintery Sunday, then vanished at the corner, bound for a brand-new existence that Clarisse Rivière would never be part of.
Oh, but Ladivine understood how he’d come to find life with Clarisse more than he could bear, she understood it the moment he told her, slightly sheepish but also visibly proud of himself for daring to take such a step, that he was planning to leave the house, she understood it, yes, and in a way gave him her blessing.
Was that why she so resented him now?
Because she’d wished him happiness, and had never said any such thing to Clarisse Rivière, because she might thereby have brought sorrow crashing down onto Clarisse Rivière’s poor head?
She’d wished the wrong person happiness — was that why she couldn’t forgive Richard Rivière?