Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye Read Free Book Online Page B

waiting perhaps to be alone before lofting himself heavily up again into the deep shade of the poinciana and sitting on the branch stripped and polished by his flip-flops—that was what she kept wondering as she fanned through the official documents stamped everywhere, which her father had given her: had she not, in her carelessness, really let Sony down?
    The Mercedes was dirty and dusty, the seats covered in crumbs.
    In the past her father would never have put up with such slovenliness.
    She leaned toward Masseck and asked him why Sony was in prison.
    He clicked his tongue and snickered. Norah realized that he’d been badly put out by her question and wouldn’t answer it.
    Deeply embarrassed, she forced herself to laugh too.
    How could she have done that?
    Obviously it wasn’t his place to tell her.
    She’d been thrown. She felt ashamed.
    Just before getting into the car she’d tried to contact Jakob. In vain: the phone in the apartment rang, but no one answered.
    It seemed to her unlikely that the children had already left for school, and just as unlikely that all three were sleeping so soundly as to not be aroused by the phone’s insistent ringing.
    So what was going on?
    Her legs were shaking nervously.
    She would have been grateful, at that moment, to take refuge herself in the fragrant golden semidarkness of that big tree!
    She smoothed her hair back, retied her bun, and, as she stretched forward to see her reflection in the rearview mirror, thought that Sony would perhaps have difficulty recognizing her because, when they’d last met, eight or nine years earlier, she didn’t have those two furrows on either side of her mouth or the rather thick, pudgy chin, against which she remembered having struggled ferociously when younger, guiltily aware that her father found rolls of fat disgusting, before, later, without remorse, and even with a certain provocative satisfaction, she’d allowed it to bloom, knowing full well that such a chin would offend that slender man who admired women, and it was from that moment she’d resolved to be free, to cast aside all concerns about pleasing a father who did not love her.
    As for him, well, he’d gotten completely fat.
    She shook her head, afraid and lost in thought.
    The car was crossing the town center, and Masseck was driving slowly in front of the big hotels, calling out their names in a rather grand tone of voice.
    Norah recognized the one where their mother and her husband had briefly stayed, back in the days when Sony, a first-rate student in high school, seemed destined for great things.
    She’d never bothered to consider why Sony should have returned to live with his father after studying political science in London, and above all why he seemed to have made nothing of his life or his gifts.
    That was because she considered him at the time to be much luckier than she was. She’d had to work her way through college in a fast-food restaurant, so she didn’t think herself under any obligation to worry about her spoiled younger brother’s mental state.
    He’d fallen into a devil’s clutches and had never been able to break loose.
    Sony must have suffered greatly from clinical depression. Poor, poor boy, she thought.
    It was at that moment that she saw before her eyes Jakob, Grete, and Lucie sitting at the hotel terrace where they’d all had lunch before.
    Her blood ran cold. She closed her eyes.
    When she opened them again, Masseck had turned into another street.
    They were running along the coast road, and the car was filled with the smell of the sea.
    Masseck had fallen silent, and his face, which Norah could see in profile, had taken on a sullen, stubborn, hurt look, as if being made to drive to Reubeuss were some personal slight.
    He parked opposite the high gray walls of the prison.
    Standing in the hot, dry wind, she got in line behind a large number of women. Noticing that they’d all put down on the pavement the baskets and parcels they’d brought with