Read Her Father's Daughter Online

Authors: Marie Sizun

Her Father's Daughter (10 page)

BOOK: Her Father's Daughter
9.55Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

These separations, it turns out, have a name: divorce. The child learns this word. And its derivatives. The father and mother are divorced. The mother is a divorcee. What about me, am I a divorcee? asks the child. No, she's told, not at all, what a thought! That child really is a fool, says the grandmother. And yet the child herself feels very divorced.

But she doesn't cry, not her. It's just that, despite her new and extensive understanding of things, she's become a little deaf, a little blind to the world around her. It's as if, with her degree of understanding, she's lost some of her curiosity about it.

She understands perfectly that her father has become the husband of another woman, the blonde lady whose name is Agnès.

She understands that they live in their own apartment, where she's invited to spend the day on a Sunday from time to time.

She understands that this couple soon have a baby – a real one this time, which won't be dismissed as a dream. A baby her father will hold in his big freckled hands, whose smell and warmth the child is gradually forgetting.

She understands that this little boy will call her father Daddy.

She'll even understand that one day this little boy will be astonished to hear her calling his father Daddy.

She understands everything, and this everything, she believes, means nothing to her.

That's how one day you stop being a child and you end up calling yourself France, like everyone else.

 

 

Over the years of apprenticeship, when the child and her father see each other, they will each keep to their roles and they'll play them as they should be played, as they're both expected to play them. And yet they will sometimes recognize each other, the father and the child, for a moment, just like that, a stolen moment, in the middle of other people's conversations, cutting across the presence of others. They'll find each other.

They look at each other, and it's no longer France that he sees, but his child. And for her, it's not the husband of the blonde lady, but her father, her own father. The man who was her father for a short time. Such a short time.

And in that eye contact there is a lot of sadness, and a bit of happiness. But this, well, this is their secret.

 

 

Images from the past, so distant, so fragmentary, that they seem rather laughable.

The child has become a grown-up. She's a woman. It's a long time now since she laid bare her parents' secrets. Found out about it all, analysed, understood and swept it aside.

She has hushed the child she once was. Has reduced her to silence, to an indulgent oblivion, a smile.

France has wrung the child's neck. Has made her forget the furious love she once felt for a second-hand father.

 

The father and daughter live in different cities, far apart. They both lead full lives. See each other once a year, perhaps. Sometimes less. There are telephone calls. Conversations about this and that, family events, work, health. Glossing lightly over things.

About nothing. These conversations are about nothing.

No proper conversations were ever had.

Nothing was ever said.

She still likes calling her father, though. It's always him who picks up. Hello. She hears his voice. The voice from before. The voice from the old days. ‘Hello, Daddy?' she says, and then, just for a second, it's as if anything could happen. One second. But nothing happens. She says only the expected things. He does the same probably. Never anything real. Never anything that matters. Nothing of what matters to her. In fact she only ever calls when everything's going well, when she can give a positive image of herself. Of his life, she never asks anything. She doesn't actually know anything. She's never known anything. She'll never know anything. Perhaps she doesn't want to know anything.

But every now and then, lurking beneath particular words, beneath an inflection in a voice, on one end of the line or the other, there's something more, the beginnings of something, a sort of complicity. Nothing is said, though. Ever.

 

One evening, it's not him who answers the telephone. She's told that her father has just died. Then she realizes it's too late. That they'll never talk.

No emotion. She doesn't cry. It doesn't feel real.

So, she thinks simply, I didn't see him again. She didn't have time. Which doesn't mean anything.

She attends the funeral as if in a dream, without a tear.

 

 

This death, the reality of this death, will hit her a few weeks later.

 

It is when she comes home from a dinner, she's had a little too much to drink, she feels good, happy, she suddenly feels like calling her father and telling him so, just like that. She has, monstrously, forgotten he's dead. But in the time it takes to start reaching for the telephone she remembers, and her hand drops back.

She remembers, and it is only then that she realizes her father is dead. That she understands it.

She understands she'll never be able to call him again. She'll never talk to him again. Never hear him again. Never again hear that voice.

And it's now too late to understand each other.

As for his giraffe-hands, he'll never know.

 

That's when her grief begins.

 

 

And then one day, much later, something strange happens.

She's travelling back to Paris after a long trip, the train's packed. She's tired, a bit sad. Alone. She knows there's no one waiting for her.

They're approaching Gare de l'Est and she's got up from her seat to stand by the door, wanting to get onto the platform as quickly as possible, to avoid the crush. She's standing in that cramped space where there are several other impatient passengers facing away from each other, motionless, their eyes pinned on the windows in the door, looking for signs of the station in the darkness, switched off from anything else, indifferent to each other. She too is switched off, indifferent, filled with the boredom and weariness of this homeward journey.

When all at once something catches her eye, draws all her attention, something surprising and yet familiar, an isolated image which gives her an incomprehensible, violent blast of emotion: right in front of her, on a level with her eyes, is another passenger's hand, just his hand, in a raincoat; she can't see the rest of him.
A hand clasping the rail to the right of the door. This hand is quite old, quite rough, big, with very white skin, covered with rusty freckles, a hand she would recognize in a thousand. A hand which must smell of tobacco and eau de cologne, she knows that, a hand which is both strong and gentle.

And then and there, the child, miraculously herself once more, remembers so exactly the smell of that hand, its gentleness, and the furious intensity of her child's love that her heart beats very hard. She suddenly has such a desperate longing to touch that hand, she could almost cry, to touch it, kiss it, take refuge in it.

A vertiginous wave of tenderness which lasts only a moment.

They've arrived. The man in the raincoat drops his hand, turns round before stepping onto the platform: the false likeness of her father evaporates.

But the true one now lives on in the child. For good.

 

No one will notice the young woman's eyes are full of tears. Of happiness. Of sheer gratitude.

Peirene Press publishes series of world-class contemporary novellas. An annual subscription consists of three books chosen from across the world connected by a single theme.

The books will be sent out in December (in time for Christmas), May and September. Any title in the series already in print when you order will be posted immediately.

The perfect way for book lovers to collect all the Peirene titles.

£35
1 Year Subscription
(3 books, free p&p)

£65
2 Year Subscription
(6 books, free p&p)

£90
 3 Year Subscription
(9 books, free p&p)

Peirene Press, 17 Cheverton Road, London
N
19 3
BB
T
020 7686 1941
E
[email protected]

www.peirenepress.com/shop
with secure online ordering facility

Peirene's Series
FEMALE VOICE: INNER REALITIES

NO
1
Beside the Sea
by Véronique Olmi
Translated from the French by Adriana Hunter
‘
It should be read
.'
GUARDIAN

NO
2
Stone in a Landslide
by Maria Barbal
Translated from the Catalan by Laura McGloughlin and Paul Mitchell
‘
Understated power
.'
FINANCIAL TIMES

NO
3
Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman
by Friedrich Christian Delius
Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch
‘
A small masterpiece
.'
TLS

………..
MALE DILEMMA: QUESTS FOR INTIMACY

NO
4
Next World Novella
by Matthias Politycki
Translated from the German by Anthea Bell
‘
Inventive and deeply affecting
.'
INDEPENDENT

NO
5
Tomorrow Pamplona
by Jan van Mersbergen
Translated from the Dutch by Laura Watkinson
‘
An impressive work
.'
DAILY MAIL

NO
6
Maybe This Time
by Alois Hotschnig
Translated from the Austrian German by Tess Lewis
‘
Weird, creepy and ambiguous
.'
GUARDIAN

SMALL EPIC: UNRAVELLING SECRETS

NO
7
The Brothers
by Asko Sahlberg
Translated from the Finnish by Emily Jeremiah and Fleur Jeremiah
‘
Intensely visual
.'
INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

NO
8
The Murder of Halland
by Pia Juul
Translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken
‘
A brilliantly drawn character
.'
TLS

NO
9
Sea of Ink
by Richard Weihe
Translated from the Swiss German by Jamie Bulloch
‘
Delicate and moving
.'
INDEPENDENT

………..
TURNING POINT: REVOLUTIONARY MOMENTS

NO
10
The Mussel Feast
by Birgit Vanderbeke
Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch
‘
An extraordinary book
.'
STANDPOINT

NO
11
Mr Darwin's Gardener
by Kristina Carlson
Translated from the Finnish by Emily Jeremiah and Fleur Jeremiah
‘
Something miraculous
.'
GUARDIAN

NO
12
Chasing the King of Hearts
by Hanna Krall
Translated from the Polish by Philip Boehm
‘
A remarkable find
.'
SUNDAY TIMES

COMING-OF-AGE: TOWARDS IDENTITY

NO
13
The Dead Lake
by Hamid Ismailov
Translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield
‘
Immense poetic power
.'
GUARDIAN

NO
14
The Blue Room
by Hanne Ørstavik
Translated from the Norwegian by Deborah Dawkin
‘
Shrewd and psychologically adroit
.'
LANCASHIRE EVENING POST

NO
15
Under the Tripoli Sky
by Kamal Ben Hameda
Translated from the French by Adriana Hunter
‘
It is excellent
.'
SUNDAY TIMES

………..
CHANCE ENCOUNTER: MEETING THE OTHER

NO
16
White Hunger
by Aki Ollikainen
Translated from the Finnish by Emily Jeremiah and Fleur Jeremiah
‘
A tale of epic substance
.'
LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS

NO
17
Reader for Hire
by Raymond Jean
Translated from the French by Adriana Hunter
‘
A book that will make you want to read more books
.'
COSMOPOLITAN

NO
18
The Looking-Glass Sisters
by Gøhril Gabrielsen
Translated from the Norwegian by John Irons
‘
Disturbs and challenges
.'
THE NATIONAL

NEW IN 2016
FAIRY TALE: END OF INNOCENCE

NO
19
The Man I Became
by Peter Verhelst
Translated from the Dutch by David Colmer
‘A haunting, apocalyptic novella.'
GUARDIAN

NO
20
Her Father's Daughter
by Marie Sizun
Translated from the French by Adriana Hunter
‘
Beautifully controlled
.'
LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR

NO
21
The Empress and the Cake
by Linda Stift
Translated from the Austrian German by Jamie Bulloch
‘
Impressive
.'
TAZ

 

 

 

 

Peirene Press is proud to support
Counterpoints Arts

 

Counterpoints Arts is a charity that promotes the creative arts by and about refugees and migrants in the UK.

‘
We are living in a time of human displacement. We need bold and imaginative interventions to help us make sense of migration. And who better to do this than artists who are engaging with this issue
.'

ALMIR KOLDZIC AND ÁINE O'BRIEN, DIRECTORS, COUNTERPOINTS ARTS

By buying this book you are helping Counterpoints Arts enhance the cultural integration of refugees – a mission which will surely change our society for the better.

 

Peirene will donate 50p from the sale of this book to the charity.

 

www.counterpointsarts.org.uk

BOOK: Her Father's Daughter
9.55Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Merchants in the Temple by Gianluigi Nuzzi
Sweet Child o' Mine by Lexi_Blake
The Primal Connection by Alexander Dregon
The Inspector-General by Nikolai Gogol
The Scroll of the Dead by David Stuart Davies
Electronic Gags by Muzira, Kudakwashe
Bicycle Built for Two by Duncan, Alice
The Red Parts by Maggie Nelson