And so Malinka, unable to compare her life to other children’s, never having been invited to anyone’s house, long believed that her mother held no grudge against life or any living soul, not even the man whose face she looked for in crowds, whose figure or walk she relentlessly sought to find in every man she saw, but that irrational hope lay hidden behind words of lucidity and patience and so never appeared as what it was.
“Your father’s got to be somewhere,” Malinka’s mother would say in her calm, melodious voice. “We’ll run into him someday.”
And this seemed so indisputable that Malinka never waited for her mother to come home without thinking she might appear on the arm of the man who had been waiting close by, calm and patient as she, waiting for her to find him at last, and that man, with a musical voice and no trace of an accent, that man who could not show himself until his face had been spotted in the street, would be her father, her glorious father.
He was the only person Malinka’s mother ever spoke of, and she did so profusely, worshipfully, even if, Malinka came to realise, her descriptions were never particularly precise, and she seemed to know little of this eminent man’s life, past or present.
And so Malinka never felt his good will watching over them.
Unlike the naive servant, she knew that the man’s thoughts never turned to the two of them, that he might well know nothing of their existence, for they were only two lowly flowers.
“Your father’s a fine man,” Malinka’s mother often told her. “You know, he’s really, really nice. He has beautiful chestnut hair, and always wears it neatly combed back. He has a car. He might have a new one by now. I’ll bet he’s found a terrific job, too.”
Malinka felt no contempt for those hopes.
She felt no contempt for the servant, her peculiar mother.
But she could not help believing that her mother might indeed one day come home with her grocery bags, her rain-soaked overcoat and the lush-haired man who had jubilantly allowed her to see his face in the street.
And were that man ever to come to pick her up at school, she knew, she would not be afraid to call him her father.
No disbelief or disgust would curl the other girls’ lips on hearing that truth or that lie, she wasn’t sure which, but maybe if it was a lie her own lips would stay pressed tight in a bitter crease.
Her face would be like her father’s, that man who until now had let his love rain down on heads other than hers, leaving her and her mother in their vulnerable aloneness.
But, she understood, her face would be like her father’s.
And another realisation hit her at the same time, with the violence of a thing long known but never quite grasped, now abruptly revealed in all its simplicity: being that woman’s daughter filled her with a horrible shame and fear.
Oh, she was also ashamed of her shame and her fear, particularly because she was painfully aware of her mother’s fragility, she who had no protector to rely on and was nonetheless wary of no-one.
But stronger still was her repugnance at the thought of letting it be seen, even simply in the street, on the bus, before strangers, that she was the daughter of a woman of no consequence.
From her earliest childhood, Clarisse Rivière would realise, she had done nothing but spurn her mother, and her mother had pretended not to notice, and perhaps had not noticed, in a way, having found another explanation for her daughter’s coldness than the simple scandal of her own appearance, her own face.
Because that was a truth Malinka’s mother would never be able to bear.
And Malinka knew it, in her despairing, furious love, because she could read the servant’s emotions better than the servant herself.
She pulled away from her mother, renounced her before the world, seeing no other way.
She always took care to walk at some distance from her, and she was delighted to see that the people around them never included them both in the same knowing glance, the impenetrable woman and the beautiful teenager with the thick, curly hair, inherited, the marvelling servant assured her, from her many-splendoured father.
At fifteen Malinka heightened the natural pallor of her face with wan make-up.
She felt a boundless, remorseful, stifling tenderness for the servant.
She secretly watched her in the evening, studying her face, looking for any flaw in her good cheer, any decline in her confidence that she would one day bring about the appearance of the man who, the servant was sure, had once loved her, and loved her still, but did not know where to find her.
It was up to her, Malinka’s mother, not only to recognise him in the street, but also, in some mysterious way, to make him appear, and for that small miracle the force of her own assurance might be enough.
Her good cheer never faltered, but over time it turned slightly abstract, as if her habitual happiness and optimism were making her forget she had fewer reasons for those emotions than when, as a very young woman, newly arrived here with the child in her belly, she founded her hope and her joy on the enchanted sense that every single day this land worked miracles more unlikely than a longed-for face’s sudden appearance in the midst of a crowd.
Her good cheer was waning and weakening, but not her will to be cheerful, and the servant’s gaze turned a little unfocused, very discreetly unhinged.
She asked Malinka, then in senior school, the same question as when she was in primary school.
“Did you work hard today? Is your teacher happy with you?”
And then she broke into a smile, as if already sure of the answer, not even listening to whatever Malinka might say, not even noticing that sometimes Malinka said nothing at all, and Malinka never took this amiss, understanding that in order to keep a light heart her mother’s contact with reality had to be cautious, buffered by distraction and a faint, unwavering rapture.
The women who employed Malinka’s mother seemed to think highly of her.
She often brought home little presents, and once one of her employers came for coffee. Malinka and her mother made pound cake and fresh fruit salad for the occasion.
The woman ate happily, casting inquisitive but kindly glances at Malinka. She complimented her on her hair, her cool complexion.
“She has her father’s hair,” said Malinka’s mother, mechanically, ardently, then drifted back into the self-satisfied, benevolent, misty, slightly dim look that left her ever more rarely.
The woman suggested that she and Malinka move into a flat she owned, three rooms on the ground floor of her building.
“You’ll find it so much more comfortable,” she said, glancing with dismay around the little room that served as both the kitchen and the servant’s bedroom, “and, you know, I won’t ask much.”
Almost apologetically, she added:
“It would make me so happy to help you.”
An odd agitation suddenly came over Malinka’s mother.
She stood up a little too fast, bumped into the corner of the stove.