And suppose, thought Ladivine in the four-wheel drive, suppose Marko wanted to be a little like Richard Rivière, suppose he was striving to attain what he saw as Richard Rivière’s marvellous force, his charming authority, the perfect certitude of his word?
Wasn’t she to blame for that too?
Without trying to, had she not, in the first years of her life with Marko, spoken of Richard Rivière in such terms that Marko could only feel crushed by the weight of his own insignificance?
On various plausible pretexts, Richard Rivière had never bothered to come and meet either the children or Marko, thereby, in her husband’s eyes, heightening his prestige, which, troublingly, grew more powerful still with the murder of Clarisse Rivière.
But instead of keeping quiet, shouldn’t Ladivine then have convinced Marko that Clarisse Rivière would still be alive had Richard Rivière stayed and looked after her, had he not so completely and so coldly abandoned her, like a wife he’d come to despise years before?
And that couldn’t be, could it?
One thing that often irritated Ladivine was that Marko never seemed to appreciate the full splendour of Clarisse Rivière’s innocence.
Yes, he treated her with the same kindness and thoughtfulness he offered everyone, but that was just it, he never showed, through a special, exceptional attitude, that he was aware of that ragged, dismantled woman’s unique grandeur, never showed that he had every reason to respect her far more than he did Richard Rivière, whom he admired childishly, without knowing him.
Oh yes, that had often infuriated Ladivine.
But, she thought in the four-wheel-drive, wasn’t that her fault? How to know?
Hadn’t she too treated Clarisse Rivière with condescension, hadn’t she hidden her tortured love under a mask of off-handedness and even, sometimes, effrontery?
How could Marko have suspected her burning desire to see Clarisse Rivière rescued and loved when she expressed it so badly, so obliquely?
He was just as casual, just as amiably distant, polite and unforthcoming with Clarisse Rivière as she was, and what could he be accused of, thought Clarisse Rivière in the four-wheel drive, except refusing to understand that he was much like Clarisse Rivière, in the special sort of drab saintliness that they shared?
But now Marko was dazzling, now he radiated a glorious, wicked flame.
Unusually, the children hadn’t yet drifted off to sleep.
Even Daniel was squirming, his eyes wide open and slightly bulging.
Ladivine thought him rapt in an unfocused pleasure that the mere presence of Marko’s body, of his flesh as if on fire beneath his pink tunic, was pretending to offer him, then suddenly snatching it away, refusing any possibility of fulfilment.
Now and then Daniel snickered, understanding nothing but, thought Ladivine, putting on the forced cynicism of a teenager who suspects some hidden meaning and doesn’t want to seem clueless. He snickered with a horrible knowing smirk, thought Ladivine, frightened.
The GPS’s silken commands landed in that electric silence like sly insinuations.
Marko was driving a little too fast on the now-deserted road, freshly asphalted, past fields of banana trees.
An amused little smile floated on his lips, ready to burst into full bloom at the slightest provocation.
How handsome he was, how appealing, how, clearly, he wished Ladivine would come over to his side and delight with him in this new, untrammelled, superior, brutal way of being!
She remembered that Marko always needed her approval, express or implicit, in everything he did.
Never, she was sure, had he tried to exclude her from something in which he found happiness or satisfaction, as she had with that big brown dog, and she had even wondered if he was capable of any pleasure at all, of any kind, except insofar as Ladivine consented.
Those days were gone. With all her being, with all her flesh, she could feel Marko breaking free of everything that bound his gratification to Ladivine’s approval.
No less clearly, she saw the desire he still nonetheless felt, not desperate or cunning but simply companionable, to include her in his new enchantment.
A wave of regretful, anguished nausea swept over her.
She looked at him, that bewitching man, she remembered the deep tenderness she once felt for him, she recalled that he was the father of her children and could be hers again if she liked. She wanted to whisper “Marko, my love.” She reached out to touch his shoulder.
But just then he turned towards her, and in his eyes she thought she saw a gleam she’d never seen before, something she didn’t want to get close to for anything in the world, not even with love’s help
— a joyous, arrogant rejection of decency and rectitude, of fear and compunction.
The smile on Marko’s lips came to life, and it was his usual handsome smile, loving and slightly tremulous, put on to tempt her.
But in his eyes was there anything other than cold calculation?
Ladivine sensed a distance between that smile and himself, as if his wicked spirit had remembered that smile and realised its power to placate her, the deployment of his new omnipotence having failed to sway her.
Soon, she wondered, would he have even that smile to draw on?
Because his smile was hovering at the very edges of his lips, a faraway, uncertain memory of what even now was no more, while his gaze, turned inward, was fixed on another goal, a secret goal — oh no, not even secret, Marko’s new desires radiated from his whole body, the car thrummed with those waves, forbidding the children to take refuge in sleep.
Surprised by the sound of her own voice, Ladivine shouted:
“Wellington!”
Then she huddled on the edge of her seat, as far from Marko as possible.
Sullenly, he pretended to focus on the road ahead, roaring recklessly past overloaded old lorries and rusting, old-fashioned little cars whose drivers sometimes sent a vigorous gesture of hostility Marko’s way.
“I want to see him again,” Daniel whined.
“We’ll never see Wellington again,” said Annika, in a grave, superior voice.
“Why not?”
“Because Daddy says so.”
Never, in the old days, would that little girl have announced that something involving the whole family wouldn’t come to pass simply on Marko’s orders, Ladivine thought.
“From now on, it’s forbidden to speak Wellington’s name,” said Marko, calmly.
Annika burst into a painful, sharp, prolonged laugh, which seemed to brighten Marko’s gloomy heart.
To keep her company and express his approval, he began to laugh too, his fists pounding little blows on the steering wheel.
After two monotonous hours on the perfectly straight road, flanked by endless banana and sweet-potato plantations, Marko turned onto a yellow dirt road that soon entered the forest.
Ladivine had stopped looking back to see if Daniel and Annika were finally asleep — the atmosphere individually embracing each child was arousing enough that she could feel them holding themselves at the ready, unsure what they were waiting for but maniacally attentive to their father’s every move, his every word or sigh, anything that might give them a lead to follow, give them a place in the wake of his dazzling vigour.