“You’ll have to make another cup. And then you can deal with her over there,” she said, nodding towards Malinka’s mother.
Venomously, making sure Clarisse was still looking into her aggressive, suspicious eyes, she added:
“I hope she’s not going to make a habit of coming here. That wouldn’t be good for business.”
Clarisse brought the customer his coffee. Then she ambled to the table where her mother sat quietly waiting, her hands lying flat in front of her, her face turned to the window and the grimy, sunlit avenue, which rumbled with every passing truck.
Clarisse was moved to recognise her mother’s tiny, delicate ear, decorated with the little gilt ring she was never without.
She staggered under her anguish and sympathy.
She had written to the servant several times, less out of duty or compassion or in hopes of reassuring her than to safeguard her own freedom, fearing her worried mother might try to have her tracked down, although asking anyone for anything would not have been like the servant at all. She always signed her letters “Your daughter, M”.
And now her mother was looking up at her with her stoical face, her lower lip quivering all the same, her two hands no longer flat on the table but turned palm up in an instinctual gesture of supplication, a plea for mercy.
We do not know what earned us this treatment, we don’t understand it, those two calloused, tapering hands eloquently said, but what does that matter if it’s enough to ask for forgiveness, we can do that and more, whatever it takes, nothing would be beyond us. .
And Clarisse waited, deeply aware of her dead-eyed gaze, a stranger’s gaze, strictly professional, but feeling her own lip tremble no matter how hard she tried to keep her mouth tightly, severely shut.
“I’d like, maybe, a sandwich?” the servant murmured questioningly.
“Yes?” Clarisse answered in the same tone, because she had adopted that style of seeming never quite convinced of what she was saying, viscerally grasping all the mystery and charm this created, especially combined with her hushed, artificially muffled voice.
But it was not right to be charming the servant, or seeming mysterious before her pleading eyes. Fleetingly, Clarisse was ashamed of her enticing voice, that display of something slightly seedy in the life she now lived.
“I’ll bring you a ham sandwich,” she whispered, and her mother nodded, lost, smiling her mirthless smile, wanting to add something to mark the occasion and then giving up, as if warned off by some internal adviser more reasonable than herself, as if cautioned that this Clarisse was not exactly her daughter Malinka, that what was happening here was less a reunion than a first meeting.
She looked away, docile and adrift, seeming suddenly intimidated.
Clarisse pivoted on her heels, finding a reflexive and habitual pleasure in the feel of her nylon-clad thighs rubbing together.
Her boss was watching, with her sharp, slightly sardonic, experienced gaze.
Realising the other customers had all gone on their way, Clarisse felt her face turn red, though she knew her mother had not spoken her old name, Malinka. It was almost two o’clock, the café was often deserted at this hour.
But her boss knew, she knew everything, and she looked at Clarisse without hostility, with a sort of hard sadness, as if Clarisse had betrayed her, but she understood why and accepted it, then her eyes once again swept over Clarisse’s long legs, narrow hips and thin face, now probably not to measure that slender body’s resilience but to gauge its likeness to that other body, the body of the black woman sitting up very straight in her chair near the window. Once her mother had eaten her sandwich and paid her bill, Clarisse took her down the street to the little room where she lived.
She usually devoted these idle hours before the dinner shift to a nap, and she found herself longing to slip into her bed as usual, knowing her mother would think nothing of it, would simply settle into the room’s only chair and wait in unbroken silence. But she felt too much on edge even to think of sleep. And the thought that she might nonetheless have managed to drift off, forgetting the servant’s presence, and then waking with nothing resolved, to the revelation that her mother was there, patient, immovable, that thought humiliated and irritated her at the same time.
How she wished her mother could be happy far away, without her, how she wished that, wrapped up in her own happiness, she might lose all interest in her daughter Malinka, how she wished, even, that her mother’s love were monopolised by other children! How the weight of that unused love exhausted her, that vast but humble, mute love, irreproachable! How her own sympathy weighed on her!
“You can take off your raincoat,” she said, with some sharpness in her voice, seeing the servant meekly keeping it on out of politeness.
Her mother carefully folded the raincoat and laid it on the bed.
She stood there, her discreetly approving gaze surveying the neatly made bed, the clean linoleum, the white sheer curtains at the window, and although she said nothing her silence was neither heavy nor eloquent, it was the peaceful, homey silence that once reigned in their house, the foundation of their entente.
And now that strange silence was taking hold of the room, filling it with hominess and melancholy. Frightened by the dullness she felt coming over her, Clarisse rebelled. She sternly reminded herself that freedom was a duty, as was anger, even unjustified.
“So,” she said in a voice without affection, “this is where I live now.”
“Yes, it’s nice. It’s clean.”
“You must have a train to catch.”
Oh, that involuntary pleading tone in her voice, as if she had to feel endangered by any decision Malinka’s mother might make!
She felt as though she were falling into a deep hole of clinging, entangling emotions, of limp devotion and degrading resentment, with her mother looking on from the edge, untouched, superior and pure in her unwavering love.
A hint of a sincere smile creased the servant’s lips. Was there not, Clarisse thought in disbelief, a kind of triumph in that smile? Nausea washed over her, so powerless, so mediocre did she feel.
And she knew what her mother was about to say before the words reached her ear. Living so far away, she thought herself out of range of the servant’s limitless feelings, but now they were coming back at her, and a shadowy fear that had been vaguely blighting her happiness for months was beginning to come true.
“I have a little room of my own,” her mother said serenely, still smiling that sincere smile, a smile not of triumph, Clarisse realised, but of perhaps childish pride.
“What room? Where?” She groaned in dismay, her dismay having already understood and anticipated the answer.
Her mother took a step away from her, no longer afraid or intimidated but suddenly exultant at this evocation of her boldness and ingenuity.
She gestured broadly towards the window.
“Over that way, by the docks. I had all our things brought down. The old house is empty, but I gave them notice, I won’t pay for nothing.”
“What about your job?” Clarisse almost shrieked.
“I’m not worried. I’ll find something here.”